


Courting Nightfall

by Crimson1



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blood and Violence, Dark Fantasy, Discrimination, Dream Sex, Dungeons & Dragons References, M/M, Past Lives, Role Reversal, Vampire Barry Allen, Vampires, Virgin Len
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:15:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 61,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26050240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crimson1/pseuds/Crimson1
Summary: Len is a darkling – a half dark elf – in a world that hates him, protected only by having been raised by the Order of the Sun to become a priest. He continues to fail to rise above being an acolyte despite having come of age and longs for a different life, one he only glimpses in dreams when he is with a mysterious beautiful man he wishes was real.After encountering an adventuring party made up entirely of other half races – a half-elf, gnome, and giant respectively – Len is drawn to accompany them on their mission to find and destroy a fabled vampire lord. However, the pull he feels toward those lands and the barrier keeping it hidden might be more fated than he realizes.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Leonard Snart, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 50
Kudos: 161





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> More characters to be added as this goes. 
> 
> I know some of you may be waiting on my Shadow Lands story, the second book to follow The Prince and the Ice King, and I absolutely will be writing that eventually. This one just happened to grab me first. 
> 
> It is inspired by Dungeons and Dragons, particularly the story of Curse of Strahd, which is basically D&D Dracula. I am doing my own thing with it to be sure and am very excited about where I plan to take this. It will be VERY AU, ready to be an original story, but since ColdFlash inspired it, I still wanted to start there and share it with you here. 
> 
> This will be long and definitely start as a slow burn, so stay tuned!

Len drew back the hood of his robe and turned to face the sun. His eyes watered almost instantly, even while closed, an itch overtaking his skin like the start of a burn, yet the warmth felt enjoyable for a time.

He couldn’t look directly at the sun, his eyes a similar blueish gray to his skin tone, though more reflective, as if made of metal, and far more sensitive to the light. If he did stray his gaze for too long, or dallied outside during the day, he’d see spots for hours and suffer nauseating heat sickness.

He should have hated the sun for that, but he no more resented the golden light in the sky than the god who created it.

The Sun God couldn’t be blamed, after all. He never listened to Len’s prayers to begin with. Not the ones that mattered.

The bustle of the market drew his attention back out of the alley, and he flattened himself to the wall, fading into the shadows as he waited for his prey.

Jakob always took the same route to retrieve his daily grain, which he used to make ale more often than bread. He was a slender human, tall and bony, his skin not properly fit for his form, with prominent features that all seemed to be meant for different men. His outward appearance was not why Len targeted him, however.

At long last, Jakob appeared, long strides carrying him swiftly through the market, his eyes narrowed, like a nervous thief.

Len chuckled, taking what he knew to be perverse joy in this.

As soon as Jakob walked past where he was hidden, Len plucked the man’s coin purse from his belt without the faintest noise, jostle, or weight change to give him away. He’d become a master of the art of pickpocketing over many youthful years of guile, and Jakob was his favorite victim.

“Oh dear,” Len said, stepping out of the alley and watching Jakob’s shoulders tense. “Master Jakob, sir, it seems you’ve dropped your purse.”

Jakob spun.

Len had shorter strides, but he was still tall for a darkling, and was a hair’s breadth from Jakob’s face by the time he’d fully turned. “Here you are, _sir_.”

“Thank you,” Jakob said shortly and tore the bag from Len’s fingers, careful not to touch him. He’d stopped asking where Len had found the purse ages ago. He knew the game, Len choosing a different hiding place each day and never failing to catch him unaware, but there was nothing Jakob could do about it, since Len always returned the purse without a single coin missing. 

“Why do you do that, Master Len?” a small voice asked after Jakob had huffed off.

Beside Len was a boy, small, eight years old at best, with a pale complexion and long, pointed ears. “Because, young Michael,” Len crouched before him, “it makes him uncomfortable, and some people deserve to be uncomfortable.”

Michael giggled.

“It’s just Len though, remember? Only full priests or married men with professions like Master Jakob are to be called ‘Master.’”

“But… you’re grown.” Michael’s face scrunched in confusion. “Aren’t you a full priest yet?”

Len fought a frown, not wanting to pass his resentments to the boy. Michael had enough problems, being young and small and in nothing but rags as he stood in the market, begging. “Adulthood and titles don’t always go hand in hand.”

Len had come of age months ago, but he’d yet to become an anointed priest of the Sun God. He remained an acolyte until he passed his remaining tests—which he kept failing.

“Have you eaten today?” Len changed the subject, noting how gaunt the boy’s cheeks appeared.

Michael shook his head.

Central City wasn’t known for being hospitable to other races, let alone urchin high elves. In elven lands, such as the Star Kingdom, Michael might have lived like a noble, but in human territory, only humans prospered.

Len wondered why high elves even lived in this country, but everyone’s circumstances were their own and not always within their control to change.

He should know.

Bringing a finger to his ash-blue lips, Len winked at the boy, and then raised his hood to hide his form within the silver and blue robes of the Sun God.

He’d always found it counterintuitive that the Sun God chose such colors, yet the Dark Goddess, who it was said reveled in chaos, was represented by red and gold—the colors of the _sun_. Only the Twilight God, considered the Lord of Balance, made sense to Len, as they were depicted in purple and bronze, which he’d seen many times in a sunset.

The market was crowded enough that anyone who might have spotted Len lost sight now as he headed into the throng, appearing to anyone bothering to notice as just another robed acolyte. Len was the only darkling acolyte, the only darkling in Central, and the only non-human in the entire order.

It took several paces, passing silk merchants and far too many carts of mundane trinkets, before Len arrived at an apple cart with a distracted seller filling an order for a family. One good thing about being an Acolyte of the Sun was that people tended to ignore Len for fear of being proselytized at.

They believed, they’d be shunned if they didn’t, but few enjoyed constant reminders of their faith.

As deftly as Len had removed Jakob of his purse, he snatched a precariously balanced apple from the cart. He then retraced his steps on the other side of the street, taking his time so as not to seem suspicious. Once he’d returned to Michael, he shined the apple on his robe and passed it to the boy, who bit into it ravenously.

“ _Restore_ ,” Len whispered, patting the boy’s shoulder, while subtly touching his amulet, a large medallion on a blue cord, depicting a silver sunburst.

A glow overtook Michael, returning his vitality. He still finished devouring the apple, hardly noticing that Len had healed him, but he was rejuvenated now as though having eaten and slept well for a full week.

“Good day, young Michael,” Len said and turned to take his leave—only to stiffen, as he saw another robed figure watching from the same alley where he’d laid in wait for Jakob.

_Shit._

XXXXX

Len pitched to the side as Father Lewis struck him. The older priest was thick of stature, and his meaty palm brought forth a mean sting—which Len experienced at least once a week

Sometimes once a day.

“The Sun God sees all,” Lewis snarled at where Len had toppled to the floor of his chambers. “You know this, yet you continue to defy him, even in the marketplace in broad daylight.”

“Forgive me.” Len righted himself but remained kneeling. “I shall endeavor to keep my sins to nighttime.”

Lewis struck him again.

Len had expected that one and didn’t teeter nearly as much.

“Do you wish to be cast out? To be stoned in the street without the protection of those robes, or drawn and quartered like some deviant? You spit in the face of your savior and wonder why you have yet to ascend to the priesthood.” 

Those words were growing stale in Len’s ears, he heard them so frequently. “I only fed and healed a starving child.”

“An _elven_ child.”

“I thought the Sun God knew no distinction among the devout.”

Lewis raised his hand again, and Len refused to flinch, but then the priest lowered it with a withering sigh. “That boy has not yet accepted the Sun God. Would you lie, on this holy ground, and say he has?”

Len often wondered if his amulet would burn him if he sinned on ‘holy ground’, but he doubted it. He wore it to bed, and it had yet to burn him after a morning’s pleasure with his palm. “I only wished to help him.”

Another sigh sounded, and Len dared look up to meet the stern gaze of the man who was as close to a father as he’d ever known. “Your merciful nature, however mischievous and misguided, is commendable, but you forget your place. Do you think I have time to waste on tallying your sins, when we are in dire need of more priests to help against this blight? Our streets are attacked almost every night now—by vampires, werewolves, vicious beasts—yet you continue to fail to join our ranks.

“Would you prefer for your soul, after death, to hover in limbo for all eternity like those who worship the Twilight God? Or worse, to suffer in the pits of the damned like the monsters that plague us and others embraced by the Dark Goddess?”

Len said nothing, and Lewis’s sigh this time was deflated of anger but deeply disappointed.

“You were abandoned on our doorstep, and despite your lineage, we took you in and raised you to know the Lord of Law. You swore when you were initiated that your soul, your life, belongs to him. Has that vow changed?”

If Len ever said yes, he would indeed be cast out, and the people would kill him. If not outright in the street by stoning, then by slaughtering him in some back alley during the night while he scrounged for food like Michael.

Other races were derided.

Half breeds were distrusted.

Half _dark elves_ were outright despised.

And so, he lied, “No, Father. I serve the Sun God, always.”

Lewis’s eyes went cold, like he knew Len’s words to be false, but he merely shook his head. “You will scrub every inch of this temple until it sparkles like your medallion and go to bed without nourishment. You gave up your right to supper when you stole that apple and delivered it to one of the lost. Now, leave me.”

Len ignored the scornful looks of the other acolytes and priests when he left Father Lewis’s chambers. There were some beautiful things to be said of the Sun God. If the stories were to be believed about the three gods who made the universe, then he was responsible for flowers, gentle animals, Spring and Summer, renewal and mercy. It was said that he would accept any who accepted him.

If only his worshippers were as enlightened.

One of the female priests went to Len while he was scrubbing the latrines, a vapid and devout human like most in the order. “Don’t you see that Father Lewis only wishes to save your soul? If you wish the same of others, then give them the good word, not a stolen apple.”

 _What makes my soul damned?_ Len used to ask, but he knew the answer.

He stood to wring out his cloth, and the priest lurched backward, as if afraid his movement might cause them to _touch_.

He was damned because of his dirty dark elf blood, and he hated hearing about it.

“Yes, Mother,” he said and gave her a wide berth.

XXXXX

That night, before falling into an exhausted sleep—in his tiny, wooden bed with minimal padding and coarse blankets—Len gently touched the scar that ran full circle around his neck. He tried ignoring it during the day, hidden by the high collar of his vestments, but in bed, out of his robes, his fingers often strayed there.

He didn’t know what had caused the wire-thin line. He’d had it all his life and often wondered if it had been a failed attempt to kill him as an infant. Like Father Lewis had said, he’d been abandoned on the steps of the temple.

No one wanted a darkling child.

Len’s existence, his life, was most people’s nightmare, which was why it amazed and yet soothed him that he never experienced nightmares himself. His dreams were sweet. There he had no scars. In his dreams, he was whole and wanted.

 _Desired_ , even _._

A warm, human hand trailed slowly across Len’s unmarred neck and down his naked body. Here his bed was plush and opulent, or perhaps it belonged to the man he imagined himself with. Len had never met anyone like him in waking life, yet every dream he ever had starred the same mysterious figure.

Len never saw his face clearly, but he was still a vision of noble beauty. Skin pale as cream with soft color in his cheeks, neatly trimmed dark hair that occasionally fell into his eyes—and oh, his eyes. Some might think them haunting or eerie, since they changed color, sometimes green, sometimes such a rich, ruddy brown, that they almost looked red, but Len adored them. He adored the smooth, flawless form laid out beside him, trim but well-muscled, and as naked as he was.

Still, all those features painted an incomplete picture that he could never quite bring into focus.

The man’s sex was impressive though, no doubt conjured from Len’s most carnal fantasies, as ruddy as his eyes, swollen and leaking wetness onto the sheets. Len had often longed to know the feel of it in his hands, his mouth, and deep inside him, just as he’d welcome the feel of being inside the man in turn, but his dreams never allowed more than a tease.

He didn’t know the man’s name and had never made one up, but he thought of him as an angel, giving him pleasures where real life never could.

“You are a beautiful crystalline snowflake, my love, silver and blue and pure blinding white.” He kissed Len’s cheek, his fingertips tracing mischievously down Len’s stomach. His other hand ran blunt nails through Len’s short white hair. 

That wasn’t right. Len kept his snowy-white locks tied back, but his hair fell well past his shoulders. Like the missing scar, he was different here in the dreamworld.

“I miss you,” his angel whispered and bent to kiss Len’s lips.

 _Then touch me,_ Len thought, pressing upward and opening his mouth to connect them more deeply, while instantly wanting more.

He didn’t know why his mind created a human man instead of someone more like him. Maybe because humans were all he’d ever known. The man was stunning regardless and saw Len the way he’d always wished someone would.

“Come, my love.”

Len wanted to—

“Come to me. Come _for_ me, my beautiful darkling, but come to me as well.”

Len didn’t understand. How much closer could they get? His angel was between his legs, warm hand curling around him finally and squeezing with promise. Still, for all the lust that stirred in Len, it was the intimacy of another kiss to his cheek that filled him with the most want.

“Please, love, come to me. Come…” He stroked Len firmly while licking up along one of his pointed ears, inducing a deep shudder from low at the base of Len’s spine. “Come… my Leonard.”

That wasn’t—

“Now!”

Len’s eyes snapped open as if triggered by a spring, his sheets sticky and damp atop him from how he’d come before waking.

 _Damn it_. He rarely did that, usually waking hard and unfulfilled, but then taking himself in hand. Today he’d made a mess, and it wasn’t even morning.

He must have only been asleep for an hour or two, because his window betrayed no light, and he could still hear the faint rustle of others going about their nighttime chores.

After throwing his covers aside with a grimace, Len used them to clean himself. At least he hadn’t bothered with a nightshirt. He’d have to replace the sheets to get any sleep and leave these in the washing room to be laundered. But after his dream, he felt wide awake, and as much as he would have enjoyed a return to his angel, he felt the sudden urge to be as far from the temple as possible.

Len dressed and bunched the sheets into a ball. Curfew wasn’t an issue if an acolyte finished their chores, so no one would care that he was up, but sneaking outside the temple after dark would be deeply frowned upon given the attacks, and he got frowned upon plenty.

Thankfully, the washing room was near a side door only used for milk deliveries in the mornings, and Len didn’t run into anyone in the halls. Once he rid himself of the sheets, slipping into the alley should be—

Len skidded to a stop as he barreled around the last corner, a few short strides from freedom, only to finally meet someone— _two_ someone’s, currently heatedly embracing in the washing room doorway.

The acolytes tore apart with a gasp.

It was common for members of the order to take each other as lovers, whether men like these two, women, or mixed, especially acolytes, young and ripe with worldly passions. Pleasure was only considered a sin if sought selfishly or across racial barriers, but pleasure shared was honor to the Sun God.

The walls weren’t thin, but Len had often heard his brothers and sisters crying out for their god—or whoever was evoking him that night.

The pair scurried off to find another corner, barely containing their sneers at being interrupted, specifically by _Len_.

He wished he could say he was thankful that being a darkling meant no one had ever approached him for such things, but he wished someone would. He wished that once, just once, someone other than a foolish elven boy, Father Lewis with his disciplinary strikes, or a man only real in dreams would touch him without recoiling.

Instead, everyone was like Jakob, no matter how most tried to hide it.

Lewis said bed without supper, but he’d said nothing about ale.

Len flung the sheets into the washing room and tore out into the night. The neighborhood tavern was only a few buildings down, well worth the risk of braving the streets. He would receive his fair share of scathing looks from patrons, but at least the barmaid pitied him.

Shawna was a quarter elf. Most people pretended they didn’t notice, but Len had a keen eye, and his first time in the tavern he’d stared at the way the edges of her ears came to a slight point. She’d pulled her hair forward to cover them, but when he smiled and bowed his head in apology, she’d softened.

Now, she gave him an ale for ‘donation’ every time he came in.

“Rough night, Lenny?” Shawna asked, passing him an overflowing mug when he sidled up to the bar. Even only a few weeks ago, he would have had a long wait to get her attention, let alone a drink, but the monster attacks were becoming more regular, which meant less people out after dark.

“Rough everything,” Len muttered. “Thanks, Shawna.”

He downed a third of the frothy libation in a single gulp before looking around. A less than packed bar didn’t mean the tavern was empty. Most of the tables were full, and the din was still raucous enough that listening for individual voices would have been impossible—for a human.

Len kept his hood up, but a few revelers had noticed him with visible glowers. He liked being here regardless. Like the market, the crowd and the noise drowned out his loneliness. Just like the ale.

Taking another drink, he closed his eyes and let the voices wash over him.

The blacksmith was complaining about needing an extra shipment of forging metals. The caravans kept getting attacked and it was affecting business.

A bitter housewife had snuck out after putting her babes to bed, knowing her husband was off at some other tavern, possibly at a brothel, and so she complained loudly to anyone who might offer sympathy.

A young couple was whispering in the corner, trying to have a private, sweet moment that once might have taken place amidst a midnight stroll or in a dark alleyway, but now the streets were too dangerous, and they both shared rooms with siblings back home.

One of the guards off duty—

“Another day in this shithole? I want to hunt vampires!” an unfamiliar voice drowned out the rest, low and gruff and likely inebriated.

“We only just arrived,” a second said, trying to hush his friend with a jovial tone. “We can leave tomorrow. Get our bearings first, restock supplies—”

“Did you know Central City has seen a fifteen-percentage increase in monster attacks just this week?” a third broke in, as if the other two weren’t in mid-conversation. “My Wizards Academy map updates paranormal activity automatically. Isn’t that genius? A master wizard invented it. Mysterium? Mysterion…? Mystere—”

“We should be _gutting_ fangers by now!” the first cried with the bang of a tankard upon their table.

“Without supper and a drink?” the second tried again. “My friend, you’ll be no use against a vampire lord, let alone his minions, if you charge onward on an empty stomach and without a good night’s rest. We’re on a mission. Don’t you want to do this right?”

“It’s not even only vampires and werewolves, you know,” the third continued about his map. “There are fiends and hags and who knows what else roaming these lands. We must be right at the barrier’s edge.”

“You see!” the second attempted to connect his pleas to the third’s ramblings. “We’re in the right place. If we treat ourselves tonight and rest well, we’ll have that lord’s head before another fortnight.”

Len had to turn, unable to merely eavesdrop anymore. He’d heard plenty about the monster attacks, but nothing about a barrier, or a vampire lord the creatures served. Ale in hand, he strode forward—only to stop when he saw who the voices belonged to.

None of them were human.

“I’ve never set a vampire lord to flames,” the first said, a heavily muscled half-giant, that even while sitting didn’t look quite as tall as other half-giants Len had seen—not that he’d seen many. The man looked only as tall as Len, but twice as broad. His head was shaved, though his face sported a thick beard. His nose looked as though it had been broken more than once, and above it burned fierce amber eyes.

His clothing was simple, a tunic and cloak with dwarven-made armor, though his arms remained bare, sporting so many scars that Len assumed he must have similar marks everywhere on his body. A large great-axe rested against the table beside him.

“Say, good fellow, are you interested in my map or my friend? Coz you’re starting to stare.”

Len jumped. It was the third who had spoken, with a book open to a two-page spread of a shifting map as though the typography were alive. He was shorter than his friends, but tall for his species, given his protruding ears and bulb-like nose proved he was at least half-gnome—that and the well-coifed swirl of hair sticking nearly straight up from his head.

He sat in his chair cross-legged like a child, his feet in sandals, and his outfit more that of a monk, though the books attached to his hips and spilling out of a bag on the floor spoke of being a wizard. Also, for as slight as his form was, he seemed to have very compact muscles beneath his clothing.

All three were looking at Len, their words halted. It was the second, still seemingly jovial, who kicked out the fourth chair at their table and gestured to it.

“Rest yourself, stranger, if you’re going to stand there and gawk. Are we being too rowdy?”

This man’s lineage was easier to pin down, a half-elf, disarmingly handsome and tallest of his companions. He looked like a knight from a folktale, his long dark hair not at all windblown like a normal traveler, with fair skin, eyes that sparkled blue, and only a tiny scar through one eyebrow that marred his otherwise perfect form. He wore elven armor and a sword at his belt, with a shield and short bow laid beneath the table.

They were a true adventuring party. Len had seen some come through Central before, but never any like this—never any that hadn’t been made up almost entirely of humans.

“Think he’s dim?” the half-giant said, picking up his tankard to down whatever ale remained.

“S-sorry,” Len stuttered, unused to conversing with strangers, let alone three at once, regarding him without scrunched brows or an obvious desire to get away. “May I… really join you? You wouldn’t mind?”

“We have the seat, don’t we?” the half-elf said. “I’m Raymond. _Ray_. This is Nathanial,” he gestured to the gnome, “and Mick,” he said of the giant.

“Your robes say you’re a priest,” Mick regarded him as Len inched closer, “but you look like a child. What are you, sixteen?”

“I’m twenty,” Len corrected. “I came of age this year. And you all?”

“More child than us.” Nathanial chuckled. “We’re midway to thirty. Well, Mick can add a decade to that, but we love him anyway.” He grabbed his own tankard to clatter mugs with the giant, who belched loudly and laughed with him.

If the half-elf was twenty-five, then he was no different from any human at that age, but Len didn’t want to point out that gnomes, even half-gnomes, were notorious for not reaching adulthood until forty.

Len slid into the open chair, between the gnome and the elf, and across from the giant, feeling as if at any moment this perfect picture of queerness would shatter.

“And you’re all… half?”

“Half what?” Mick grinned with a near manic glint in his eyes. “Half feral? Half mad?”

“Half elf, gnome, and giant,” Ray affirmed, “but it’s unfair to assume the other half of Mick is human. He’s actually half giant, half dwarf.”

“Really?”

“Which explains a lot,” Nathanial muttered.

Mick knocked mugs with him again, but since Nathanial was no longer hanging onto his, the tankard upended and spilled its remaining ale all over the table. Nathanial righted it, but after adjusting the book on his lap to keep it free of any spillage, he didn’t seem to care about the mess.

“I’m Len.” Len moved his own tankard away from the growing puddle. “An honor to meet you all.”

“Len?” Ray repeated. “Is that short for something?”

_Leonard._

But no… no. That wasn’t his name.

“Just Len.”

“What’s with the hood?” Mick asked. “We’re indoors, and it’s dim as fuck in here.”

“I…”

“I’m sure the riffraff are more so staring at us.” Mick made an exaggerated motion around the bar, and there were indeed many eyes pointed their direction.

Maybe the glowers Len had noticed before weren’t only meant for him.

“They’ve been ogling since we arrived,” Mick grumbled. “Is it a crime in this town to be half?”

“No,” Len answered, lowering his hood with care, and taking note that the full sight of him didn’t seem to bother anyone at the table, “but it's never needed to be a crime to be something other than the majority for people to hate or attack you for it.”

“No truer words.” Ray smiled somberly, while gingerly mopping up the spilled ale with a rag he’d pulled from the pack at his feet as if cleaning up after his friends was common course.

“You speak from experience,” Nathanial said. “You're a darkling, after all, and there haven’t been dark elves in this kingdom for centuries.”

“I’m a rare exception. My robes protect me, but it doesn't soften the looks I receive from most in this city.”

The gnome leaned forward over his crossed legs and unabashedly pat Len’s shoulder. “Good thing we're not from this city.”

A pleasant shiver shot through Len at the contact.

He had never met anyone like these people.

“What caught your attention to us then?” Mick knocked with his empty tankard on the table and waved Shawna over for a refill. “Our handsome faces? Or talk of monsters?”

“I know about the monsters,” Len said, “but what were you saying about a vampire lord? And a barrier?”

Ray hushed him with a wink as Shawna came over. She refilled each of their tankards, but when she hesitated at Len’s, since she knew he had no money, Mick told her to go on; they’d cover him.

“Put in an order for some meat pies as well, and whatever you have of bread and cheese for that one.” Mick hooked a thumb at Ray.

“I don’t eat meat,” Ray explained after Shawna had left. “And taverns don’t tend to have the best selection of produce.”

“You big cliché.” Mick snorted.

“It’s not because I’m half elf! That’s a myth, you know,” Ray said to Len, “that elves don’t eat meat. It’s rangers who don’t, because they swear themselves to an animal companion.”

“You’re not a ranger,” Nathanial said, not looking up from where he was buried back in his book. “Not yet anyway. You’re a paladin of the Sun God.”

“You are?” Len exclaimed.

Ray lifted his shield to turn it toward Len, showing off a silver sunburst in the center identical to Len’s amulet. “Well met, brother. All the guard in Star City are Paladins of Law, and I am honored to have been counted among them.”

Perhaps that was why there were only stares and whispers from the other patrons instead of outright hostility. That sunburst afforded its wielder certain immunities. 

But Len was talking to an _elf_.

“I thought Star City was completely elven-run, and that all elves worship the Lord of Balance.”

“Mostly true,” Ray said, “but we’re not quite that rigid. The Sun God keeps the peace by ruling over the guard, so that we show mercy, and the Twilight God watches over other things, such as the marketplace.”

Mick guffawed. “Meaning the Merchants Guild can rob you blind and claim it’s the will of balance!”

Ray and Nathanial chuckled too, making it easy for Len to follow suit.

“Sometimes that’s true too,” Ray admitted. “Anyway, I’d love an animal companion someday. I left the paladins to pursue my path as a ranger. My mother taught me to use a bow, and to track, and to be one with nature. And she was my human half! It’s said an animal companion must choose the one they bond to. Maybe someday a wolf will claim me.”

“Or a badger.” Nathanial smirked.

“Or a peacock!” Mick spouted.

“ _Both_ of which are noble, fierce creatures.” Ray scowled, though the ribbing was clearly good-natured. “I’d happily take anything.”

“Our new friend didn’t join us to hear tales of Star City.” Nathanial closed his book with a resounding clap. “But one closer to home, yes? Here in the Prime Kingdom? Do you truly not know about the vampire lord and his hidden fief?”

Len suddenly remembered why he had been drawn to their table. “No.”

“Even though a darkling is the hero of this story?” When Len shook his head, Nathanial pounded the top of his book’s thick cover. “Truly? No one appreciates history anymore. They all think it’s myth!” He swung an arm out toward the bar.

“Tell me then,” Len beseeched. “What do they think is myth, Master Nathanial?”

“Nate, please,” he said with a wrinkle of his nose.

“Nate then. What is the story?”

“Now you’ve done it.” Mick snickered into his tankard, as _Nate_ dropped his book onto the pile spilling out of his bag and unfolded his legs to dangle off his chair. “He’s going to go and _tell you_.”

“Once, long ago,” Nate began, hunched toward Len and wildly animated, like telling a campfire story to children, “hundreds—no, a _thousand_ —years ago, there was a human lord very near here, who ruled over a fief with its border neighboring Central City.

“His lands were vast, including a sprawling castle and many villages and valleys. The humans of the Prime Kingdom hated outsiders then. Well, more so than they do now. Half anythings were treated even worse than whispers and glares, but it was the dark elves who were considered evil and driven off. That much I’m sure you know, but the king demanded of all his lords that if they discovered dark elves after that, or darklings like yourself, they were to be killed on sight.”

“All of them?” Len felt his stomach drop.

“Every last one, out of fear for the Dark Goddess. The dark elves worship her, you know. And giants.”

Mick grinned, and Len couldn’t tell if the expression meant _he_ worshipped her as well or if he was only joking.

It was common knowledge that dark elves and giants worshipped the Lady of Chaos, but no one related to one of those races would ever admit the same, not in the Prime Kingdom, where the Sun God High Priest in the capitol held as much if not more power than the king.

“Now, this lord, a human named Bartholomew Allen,” Nate continued, “was a good man, honorable. He refused to follow the king’s order. Over time, he even made a sanctuary for dark elves and darklings, for any halfs nearby, on his own lands. He built a wall, not only out of stone but as a magical barrier, for he was a powerful wizard, not just a noble with lands and title.

“While it’s said he truly believed in the cause of treating everyone equally, regardless of birth or worship, he’d also fallen in love with a darkling rogue.”

Len leaned forward to mirror Nate, utterly entranced. 

“This darkling was a true hero. He’d roam the lands, helping smuggle people into the safety of the barrier, risking himself to help others who were hunted. But, as you can imagine, the king and the neighboring lords weren’t happy with Bartholomew and his darkling lover. They couldn’t penetrate the barrier, even with their most powerful wizards, but the darkling often ventured outside of it to do his duty and, as good as he was, one day he was caught.

“The king’s men left his head at the edge of the barrier, and Bartholomew went rightly mad. He promised they would pay and that he would find a way to bring his lover back. To prolong his own life, it’s said he turned to the Dark Goddess, and she made him a powerful vampire like none other, for he still had all his magic.

“Slowly his madness and his new dark powers cursed his lands and people. They’re all monsters now, the few humans and other races remaining only raised to be cattle to feed his horde, as he continues to look for a way to bring his lover back and to enact his vengeance on this kingdom.

“They say the Sun God condemned him further, since the Lord of Law abhors vampires, and made it so that Bartholomew is a prisoner in his own barrier, unable to leave. Until _recently_ , that is. All these attacks are signs that the barrier is weakening. Resurrected love or no, Lord Bartholomew will have his revenge, and it is already beginning.”

Len took in a loud breath, not realizing he’d been holding it. His hands were on his knees as he remained leaning forward, waiting for some sort of epilogue, but Nate simply sat back with a satisfied smirk. 

“History, he says,” Mick huffed. “Sounds like a ghost story. But it damn well better be true. There’s nothing quite like a vampire’s screams when set ablaze, or a wolf man cleaved in two.” His rumbling laugh proved his chaotic nature. Maybe he did worship the Dark Goddess.

“It’s real,” Nate affirmed. “How else would you explain these attacks? And this book…” He looked down at his pile. “Um… one of these books, details the whole story. Mark my words, my darkling friend, your fathers and mothers, or whatever you call them, know this story, they just don’t want to cause a panic.”

The attacks had seemed so removed from Len. Many people had been hurt or killed in recent weeks, and the frequency was increasing, but he’d been safe within the temple walls for so long, certain that the danger would ebb, that he hadn’t taken any of it seriously.

“Personally, I hope the lord and his people can be saved,” Ray said. “Such a sad tale.”

“The _lord_ saved?” Mick sputtered with another bang of his—once again _empty_ —tankard. “He’s a vampire!”

Nate was distracted again, sifting through his bag, possibly looking for the book he’d mentioned that recorded the tale, but Ray puffed up his chest in assurance.

“Anyone can be saved. So says the Lord of Law. Right, Len?”

Another devout, even as a half-elf, but Len couldn’t grudge Ray that when he seemed so genuine. “So says,” he intoned, and then turned to Nate. “Are you a bard, sir Nate? You told that story chillingly.”

“Just Nate, please,” he corrected again, his voice muffled from half his face being buried in his bag. “And I’m merely a lover of truth. Aha!” He snatched up a new tome, this one bound in dyed black leather. “Also a wizard, of course.”

He still looked like a monk to Len.

Len had so many other questions, but it was then that Shawna arrived with the travelers’ spread of food. Len’s stomach grumbled from the smell of it all, having gone without a meal since morning, and his hunger must have betrayed itself, because while Nate and Mick dug into their meat pies, Ray looked on Len in sympathy and broke his bread and cheese to share.

Len shouldn’t. He’d been ordered not to partake.

But then he figured why not add another sin when he’d already piled up so many.

“Thank you.” Len bowed his head and began to eat with the others, remembering his refilled ale that he’d neglected while listening to Nate’s story.

After several bites and long gulps from his tankard, he couldn’t contain his curiosity.

“So… you hope to get inside this barrier before it completely crumbles? You may be right that the order knows about this. There is much that is kept secret to only a few high-ranking priests. Do you know where the barrier begins?”

“We have an idea,” Nate said between sloppy mouthfuls of pie. “We’ll find it.”

“May I ask…” Len trailed off, but when all their eyes turned to him, he was struck once more by their incomparable differences. “How are you traveling together? Are you all from Star City?”

“Technically, I’m from that kingdom,” Nate explained, “but a small village near the Wizards Academy where I was trained. Mick was raised mostly in Bludhaven, the dwarven kingdom in the mountains. And why else would we be traveling together? We’re friends!”

The men clanked their tankards all together this time, three half-bloods in a land without compromise for anything that wasn’t whole, even if times were better than they’d been a thousand years ago.

“But… how did—”

A piercing scream rang out so alarmingly from the street that the entire tavern hushed.

Len felt the thud of his heartbeat—once, twice—and then another scream sounded, this time forming an unmistakable word.

“Vampires!”

Mick, Ray, and Nate kicked back their chairs, leaving what remained of their food and snatching up everything else—most notably, their weapons.

“Wait!” Len tried, but they were already gone, rushing for the door, whereas everyone else in the tavern had hunkered low to remain planted.

Len should do the same. He had no weapon, only his prayers, but amidst such fearless reactions from real adventurers, his whole body shouted at him to move, go, _do something_ , until seemingly against his will, he flung out of his chair to follow.

Chaos reigned in the street outside, which had been mostly empty when he’d hurried through it earlier, now filled with people running and several guards on watch trying to keep order.

Len couldn’t tell at first where his new friends had gone, but then he saw a glimpse of Nate disappearing down a side street.

“Hey!” a guard tried to stop Len, only to recoil when he saw Len’s ashen face—just like Jakob, like that priest from before, like those acolytes, and everyone else, even Shawna at times, save the three men Len was chasing.

He ignored the guard and hurried on. The side street he arrived at was narrow, leading directly to one of the lesser used gates into the city that had clearly been overrun by sheer numbers, because the creatures Len saw were a good dozen if not two.

They were vampires, the glow of their eyes and sharp, glinting fangs proved it, but Len had been taught that vampires could blend in seamlessly with normal races, while these people looked lifeless like corpses, viciously snarling as if they were mad.

Guards were trying to fend them off at the far end where they were spilling in from the broke gate, but closer to Len were the adventurers, keeping the vampires from bursting out onto the main street.

“The great wizard Circe swore by this spell, if I could only find it,” muttered Nate, closest to Len, on the ground, but not thrown or injured, just digging through his books.

Further down was Mick, who’s eyes seemed to glow like those of the vampires, totally enthralled in the fight despite only being able to swing his great-axe sparingly, given the close-quarters.

Ray was furthest away, at the start of the bottleneck from the guards, where more and more vampires were slipping through. He was defending more than striking, shield up, protecting a young pair of—the couple! It had to be the couple Len had overheard courting in the corner of the tavern!

In that moment of realization, Len watched Ray give a mighty heave with his shield, shoving a vampire back into two more behind it, and then he swung his sword with the extra room given and lopped off all three of their heads at once.

Len tasted bile in the back of his throat and wished he’d left his stomach empty. He had never seen anything killed before, and the blood that flowed from the stumps of the vampires’ necks as their bodies crumbled was black and oozed like ichor.

Mick’s axe clanged into the wall with his next swing, pulling Len’s attention back down the alley closer to him. No heads rolled this time, for several vampires broke past Mick, headed for Nate, who was still paging through his books.

“I know that spell’s somewhere—”

“Nate!” Mick cried to warn him, and Len knew he had to do more than just stand there.

“Light!” He shot out his hands, aiming for a burnt-out broken lamppost between Nate and the rushing vampires, which lit it up with a flash brighter than any flame, causing the encroaching monsters to rear back and hiss.

“No!” Nate shouted at Len, much to his surprise. “Not Light! Daylight! _Sun_ light!”

The vampires had already recovered and lunged for Nate more fiercely than before.

Len didn’t know how to summon Daylight!

“Mirror Wall!” Nate slapped his hand to the wall behind him, making it shimmer and glisten as it became reflective.

This time, when the vampires reared back, they continued to stumble away, holding up their arms to shield their eyes as if their reflections physically pained them to look upon.

Mick turned, took an orange glowing bottle of something that had been hanging from his belt—where Len now saw there were many similar bottles with differently colored liquids—and hurled it at the vampires’ feet.

Fire erupted up from where the bottle burst, enveloping the vampires in flames and causing them to shriek.

 _Alchemy_. No wonder he’d kept going on about setting things ablaze.

“For future note, regular light just pisses them off,” Nate said matter-of-factly and returned to his books as if nothing had happened.

Who _were_ these men?

Len continued to stare, having no idea how else he could assist, and watched Nate—still muttering about the spell he was looking for and recounting the history of how this Circe had created it—conjure water out of nothing and hurl it at the fire still raging once the vampires turned to ash.

The water flowed through the flames, causing a hiss of smoke, moving first past Mick’s feet, and then toward Ray, who noticed and turned his shield at the wave.

“ _Bless_!”

The sunburst on Ray’s shield pulsed with silver light, and before the water dissipated, it washed over the feet of several vampires, now _holy water_ that burned them with an audible sizzle. They toppled and melted like pudding.

More were coming, but there was a path now from Ray to the end of the side street, and he urged the young couple to run.

“Go!”

They did so, not even pausing to look at Len as they escaped past him.

That was when Len saw that more guards had arrived, standing behind him, watching as amazed as he was at the adventurers protecting their city while their own men were falling. None of them were moving to offer aid, just watching.

Like Len.

He had to help!

Rushing to one of the gaping guards, Len pulled a crossbow from slack hands and whirled back around. The guards at the other end had indeed fallen, with a new swarm of vampires descending down the narrow passage. Ray was soon taking on two, Mick three, and then one of the ones facing Mick ducked beneath his axe to head for Nate.

The Mirror Wall had faded, and Nate was still looking through his books!

“Let’s see, if Circe was from the second age—”

“Nate!” Len howled, and the wizard’s head flew up. As the vampire dove for him, he stood and punched it straight across the jaw without grimacing, as if he was made of steel. It crumbled like a human would, jaw broken and hanging visibly crooked.

 _Definitely_ also a monk, no matter what he said.

There were still so many more vampires coming, one or two taking the place of any Ray and Mick took down, but as the narrow street began to fill with more monsters coming from the far-off broken gate, Nate returned to a book he had open and hollered in triumph.

The vampire he’d punched twitched upon the ground, so he clubbed it with his heavy tome, before opening it again to the page he had marked. He knelt beside the smear of ash and blood on the ground where the other vampires had burned, sticking his hand right in the thick black substance and using it to write symbols and runes on the ground for his spell that he slowly began to speak in a whisper of Magic Tongue, until he thrust his bloody hand outward with a single clear decree.

“Massive Clot!”

Mick and Ray flattened themselves to either side of the walls as a haze of red fired down the street, striking every vampire in its path. At first, the vampires looked unaffected, but then their rushing movements turned to slogs, their limbs stiffening and eyes widening.

Vampires were fast because, unlike normal undead, their blood worked differently. It was sludge-like to be sure, at least in these creatures, but it flowed and clot and acted like normal blood, it just needed to be replenished.

Nate had just caused every ounce of blood in their bodies to clot all at once, rendering them immobile and then dropping them to the street like moths after being drawn to deadly firelight. To be certain they were dead, Mick and Ray began mowing through them with swings of their axe and sword respectively, until the street was riddled with headless bodies.

“Knew I’d find the right spell,” Nate said, clapping his book shut again and looking back at Len with a grin. “Pity that only works on ghouls.”

 _Ghouls_. That’s why they were crazed and looked like corpses. These weren’t full vampires or even vampire spawn.

“Ah!”

Nate crashed to the ground as the vampire he’d bludgeoned grabbed onto his ankles and pulled. The book flew from his hands, and he was too far from any others, winded and flat on his back, as the vampire recovered and leapt to its feet. It fell upon Nate, who was helpless and prone, its nails looking as sharp as a wolf’s claws that it swung back to slash across his throat.

Len raised the crossbow and took a breath to pray.

“Holy Fire!” he cried and just as the bolt loosed, it and the entire crossbow lit up with a glow so bright, Zen squinted as though it were the sun.

The bolt soared like a falling star right through the ghoul’s head, its hand frozen mid-strike as crackles like jagged lightning shot all throughout its body, and it fell forward, almost landing atop Nate, until he shoved upward to roll it to the side.

Because it had been infused with holy power, the creature’s crooked mouth hung open as it lay there, dead.

Ray and Mick were nearly all the way down the street now, taking care of stragglers, but they saw what had happened and came rushing back.

“Not bad,” Nate said, climbing to his feet and dusting off his robes—not that his bloody palm helped.

“Not bad? More like glorious!” called Ray. “I can’t imbue my strikes like that! Brilliant, Len! Remarkable!” As he reached Len and shifted the weight of his shield, he hissed. He had several cuts on his cheek, but many deeper slashes on his arm.

“You’re hurt,” Len said, much as the words surprised him, since he felt like he was in shock.

“It’s nothing,” Ray said with a shrug.

Len let the crossbow hang from his left hand, reaching forward with his right to touch the torn fabric above the cuts at the edge of where Ray’s bracers had protected him. “ _Heal_ ,” he whispered, feeling his amulet grow warm on the skin of his chest as Ray illuminated and his cuts began to fade.

In moments, it was as if he’d never been hurt at all.

“Remarkable indeed,” Nate said, seeming to finally notice that his one hand was still sticky with blood and trying to wipe it on his shirt. “You’re downright useful.”

“Thank you, Len.” Ray smiled. “Mick makes potions, but that can get cumbersome on the road, and my skills have never been honed that direction other than with mild blessings. We could use you.”

“Really?” Len felt like he’d caused more harm than good up until the end.

“Why, want to tag along?” Mick called from behind the others, kneeling over that last ghoul. “You got this one right in the eye!” He plucked out the bolt, bringing the ghoul’s milky eye with it, that he appraised as though looking upon a gem.

Len still felt nauseated being around so much blood and death and… parts.

“We’re leaving in the morning,” Ray said, none of them seeming at all bothered like Len was, but then, they must be used to this sort of thing. “We’d welcome another servant of the Sun God should you choose to join us. You are a priest, after all. Can’t you request leave for worthwhile missions?”

“Um… of course,” Len lied. Full priests could, but he hadn’t mentioned yet that he was a mere acolyte and not allowed to leave the city.

“If you decide your calling is for something grander,” Nate said, “meet us at the west gate at dawn.”

They were inviting him along, truly, on a real adventure to slay a vampire lord.

Len would have happily joined them to hunt a rabbit for stew.

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t…

“Coming back to finish your ale?” Mick stood in front of Len suddenly, blood-smeared and sweaty and looking very pleased about it and the carnage behind him.

“I… I should get back to the temple. It’s late.”

“Your loss.” Mick smacked Len’s shoulder with a firm clap. He seemed so large and imposing, yet his height meant he and Len looked each other right in the eyes, and Len felt no menace from him, only comradery. “If we see you tomorrow, bring a real crossbow.” He nodded at the one in Len’s hand. “That one’s shit.”

They were leaving. Len turned to follow their exit, seeing the same guards from before still gaping in wonder, while more were finally starting to arrive, getting the luxury of cleaning up the mess. Len had to go back to the temple. He had to. At this rate, someone might mention having seen him here to the wrong people.

“Thanks for the rescue!” Nate called before he and Mick disappeared around the corner.

“I’ll not say goodbye yet,” Ray lingered to add. “That way you have to see us off tomorrow. ‘Til then, brother.”

Tomorrow. Len had considered running away so many times, but the same thought had always stopped him: Where would he go?

If he had a party though, if he was with… _friends_ , then no one would ever have to discover that he’d never become a full priest.

Len dropped the crossbow and purged what little he’d eaten against the wall, thankful that only the guards remained to witness it. He’d face worse than this if he accepted their offer, but he’d be free, he could learn, adapt, and finally become something more than he could ever be here.

Perhaps this was how the Sun God finally answered his prayers.

Hands seized Len from behind before he could push from the wall, and he worried the guards were angry he’d taken the crossbow or because of what he was, or maybe it was a ghoul they’d missed, still alive and hungry. But when Len’s attacker spun him around, the truth he discovered was worse.

Father Lewis.

TBC...


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are awesome! Thank you for those following this and who have commented so far. I'm not sure how long this will be yet, but I promise Barry will start to be more prominent next chapter. ^_^ Enjoy!

“You want me to go through the trials _tonight_?”

Father Lewis looked at Len sternly. “Was it not you who decided to remain active so late?”

The harsh reprimand Len had expected hadn’t come, but instead, Father Lewis had brought him back to the temple, dragged him into his chambers like earlier, and rather than striking or punishing him, he’d told him it was not yet time for bed.

Len was even more exhausted than he’d been after cleaning the temple all day, feeling the thrill of the fight between those ghouls and his potential new friends draining from his body and leaving him further fatigued. He’d failed the trials half a dozen times before, but if he succeeded and became a full priest, he could leave with those adventurers without having to lie.

“I am ready, Father,” Len said. “I wish to complete the trials and ascend as I’ve been tasked.”

“Then come with me.”

It was late enough now that there were no sneaking acolytes in any corners. Everything was quiet, empty, and dark save a few candles. Normally, Len would have felt relief from that, not having to shield his eyes from bright lights or the sun, but the sound of his and Father Lewis’s footsteps were like a thunderous mantra of uncertainty, echoing down the corridors and off the high ceilings once they reached the chapel.

Every other time Len had gone through this it had been early morning, and the bustle of others was an almost welcome distraction from what he would face. Now, when Father Lewis stepped aside, all that remained was Len and the great mirror before the stained-glass window of the creation of the universe.

The window was in three panels. The first showed the Dark Goddess reigning fire, blood, and chaos down upon the earth. She was a beautiful but mad looking dark elf, every part of her, including her skin and hair, a deep black, save her teeth and the whites of her eyes.

The middle panel showed the Twilight God, a blank-faced and sexless figure with ears like a high elf, accepting the Dark Goddess’ chaos into one part of its panel and the holy light of the Sun God in the other as a point of balance between them.

The last panel was for the Sun God, for he had come last, always shown as an armored human warrior coming to the world’s rescue after chaos had wreaked havoc, with reprieve only being found through magic and knowledge instead of peace and prosperity. The Lord of Law was the one who brought order where the other two might have let the world burn.

That was why the true alter at the end of the chapel was for the mirror in place of any pedestal. Belief and real power, it was said, came from seeing oneself as one truly was.

Len hated that mirror, gilded in silver and twice as tall or wide as he was. He rarely if ever looked at himself, too used to others turning their gazes away that he didn’t know how to see his own face and find it pleasant. The bluish tint to his skin, the silver sheen of his eyes, the whiteness of his long hair—they were all so stark, so different from everyone else.

Atop three small steps, the mirror rested upon a tiled silver sunburst on the floor, and it was there that Len knelt, face to face with himself, with the three gods looking down on him from their tall windowpanes and Father Lewis watching from behind.

Len couldn’t see the priest in the mirror, but he felt his presence and soon heard his voice.

“Remember, you must pass all three trials to ascend. Then you will be awarded your birthright. Close your eyes, my son.”

Len did so, and as Father Lewis began to chant, even through Len’s eyelids he saw the light starting to emanate from the tiles beneath him, warm and enveloping and then, suddenly, everywhere at once.

XXXXX

Len was in the market with the sky overcast. Was it morning? He didn’t remember robbing Jakob yet today, but the streets seemed thinly populated as if past the midday meal. 

Perhaps he should—

A figure slammed into Len and nearly sent him sprawling. As he struggled to right himself, he saw the young high elf Michael running away as if afraid for his life. Then Len saw why. Michael held an apple and had collided with Len trying to get away from one of the merchants, who passed Len hurriedly in his pursuit, looking livid.

Len spun around for signs of any guards, but there were none. With no other choice, he gave chase, tension tightening in his gut that pushed him onward, even if the merchant was large and furious and screaming for Michael to stop.

They disappeared down an alley, and Len caught up to them just as the merchant was backing Michael into a dead-end.

“By the authority of the Sun God, stop!” Len cried.

The merchant whirled around, and then laughed. “By whose authority?”

Len looked at himself, but he wasn’t in his robes.

He never left the temple without his robes…

“Then… by decency’s sake, please! Michael is only a boy.”

“And a criminal. What else to be expected of an elf?” The merchant sneered, turning halfway back to Michael, which was when Len noticed the dagger in the man’s grasp. “They can’t make decent livings, so they turn their children into beggars and thieves. Better we have one less…” He gripped the dagger tighter and moved upon the trembling boy.

“Stop!” Len cried again. His robes were gone, but his hands were his own, his skin still ashen blue, yet the man didn’t seem to have noticed or surely he would have turned the dagger on him first. “I won’t let you harm him. Now stop or I will call the guard.”

The man whirled on Len again, this time charging at him and bringing the dagger close against Len’s throat. He was so massive, there wasn’t room for Michael to get by, left standing there, shaking, as the apple finally dropped from his fingers.

“I’ll kill you too! You think I care? Now _leave_.” The merchant shoved Len into the wall and returned to advance upon the boy.

“Run!” Len seized his arm, fighting with all his strength to keep the dagger from descending. He rammed a knee up into the man’s hip, hoping to unbalance him and give Michael room to escape, but while the merchant briefly buckled, he recovered and barreled into Len again, pinning him to the wall.

Michael fled, and Len soon felt why there was enough space this time, because the merchant was pressed up against him, with the dagger pierced into Len’s chest.

At least Michael was safe.

Light flashed, and Len thought surely the Sun God had him, but when it faded, he stood in the tavern.

Len had his robes on now, and the tavern was as rowdy as ever, each table full of cheering, chattering, and very drunk patrons.

Was Len waiting on an ale? He couldn’t remember…

“Sun God? Pfft! There are no gods! If gods existed, they’d do more than look down on us from up their own high-horse asses!”

Len turned, that voice cutting cleanly through any others. He resented the Sun God for his silence, but he never once doubted that the gods existed.

“It’s all bloody nonsense!”

“Nonsense?” Len strode forward, and immediately the man’s friends hushed at their table and straightened upon seeing they had been overheard by an acolyte. “And where do you think magic comes from if there are no gods?”

“Not from prayer,” the man held firm, eyes glassy as his drunkenness pulled out his true feelings that he likely wouldn’t dare speak aloud otherwise.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Len said, the rest of the tavern petering out to stifling silence. “I, however, believe. Would you deny me that right?”

“To be _wrong_?” The man slammed his tankard on the table, causing its contents to slosh over his fist. “To be foolish and mindless with your magic tricks? Be gone, sunbeam!” He snickered into his ale and drank down a large gulp of it.

Len thought of the teachings that had been pounded into him since he could understand speech, and though he feared sometimes for his own sake that they be true, he recited, “Words save no one, only the light of one’s true heart.”

The man leapt at Len like an animal, but Len didn’t give him the satisfaction of flinching.

Another light flashed— _another?_ —and Len was in the temple proper, with screams and bedlam all around him in the dark of night. His brothers and sisters were frenzied, rushing about like blurs of silver and blue in the candlelight and crying for everyone to run.

The temple was under attack!

“It’s Chaos!” a passing acolyte shouted. “The Order of Chaos!”

Len felt a twist of fear. All he knew of the Dark Goddess and her followers was what he’d been told, that the Lady of Chaos promoted violence, blood sacrifice, and revelry to the point of insanity.

He tried to follow the others, but everyone seemed to be running in different directions.

“Here!” A priest pressed a dagger into Len’s hand. “They’re coming!”

Before Len could take in all that was happening, a howling woman wearing red robes—a darkling like him—charged while swinging a hand-axe.

He raised his dagger just in time to parry, causing a clang of vibrations to shoot down his arm. It stung, but Len still bit out a hurried, “Holy Strike!” and summoned brilliant light into his weapon.

The woman staggered back, and Len wasted no time striking with the hilt of his dagger at her weapon hand. She howled far worse than her war cry, the prayer within the dagger burning her palm and forcing the axe to drop.

Len raised the dagger again to strike her down for good, but as the light dimmed, she opened silvery eyes, her face ashen blue like his, and lifted her hands in placation.

“Spare me!”

Len wavered. She was the enemy. She would have killed him without blinking. She was clearly mad and followed a mad god.

Yet, as he looked at her, trembling beneath the promise of a killing blow, all he saw was her fear and how easily he could have been just like her if he’d been raised somewhere else.

“Go.” He let the dagger drop. “Escape while you can.”

_“No!”_

XXXXX

Len gasped as the vision burst apart like a scattered cloud of smoke.

He was in front of the mirror, still kneeling upon the holy sunburst, as what he’d been experiencing faded from the mirror’s reflection and instead, once again, he saw himself—and Father Lewis storming up to him from behind.

 _“Why?”_ He wrenched Len around and shook him violently. “You know the law! Yet every time, it is the same with you!”

Mind reeling, Len could barely focus let alone fight as Lewis dragged him to his feet and over to the stained glass on the right wall of the chapel, where a different scene loomed above. These panels told of the Sun God’s three main tenets.

“Protect the innocent even at risk of bodily harm,” Father Lewis said of a man protecting a small child from a bandit. “You never fail to pass that one.”

He dragged Len on to the next panel.

“When questioned by heresy, know the words to volley back,” Lewis continued of a priest praying despite a blasphemer screaming at him. “You have failed that one before, but tonight, you succeeded. And _yet_.”

One last time, he heaved Len onward and thrust him forward to face the final panel—a young acolyte killing a follower of the Lady of Chaos.

“Be ready to end an evil life, even if they plead, for any mercy they deserve—”

“Will be granted after death,” Len finished, hoping Lewis would calm and release him, but he yanked Len close with fury in his eyes, and Len remembered why some days he hated the Lord of Law.

Because mercy and forgiveness had conditions.

“And still you fail— _every time_. You are almost unparalleled with healing and divine spellcasting, as if to prove the Sun God forgives your tainted blood—”

Len cringed.

“But still—”

“But still I will not bow to your god’s cruelty?!”

Lewis struck him so hard, Len’s head spun, and he fell to the floor like a sack of grain. “ _My_ god? But not yours?”

Len said nothing, too afraid to look up, for he had spoken unthinkingly and now he risked the fate he’d always feared.

“Come with me.”

Those same rough hands pulled Len to his feet, the world spinning far worse than before, as Lewis hauled him from the chapel and toward the wing of the temple reserved for healing.

The large room was quiet but full of recovering victims from recent attacks, most of the wounded asleep, while a few priests watched over them. Against the far wall were the bodies of those who hadn’t survived, soon to be taken out and buried.

That was where Lewis brought Len, where there were six fresh corpses—no, _seven_ , because two were children laid end to end—all elves, and one of them was…

_Michael._

Len’s stomach sunk. He couldn’t move and nearly tripped when Lewis forced him to stand before Michael’s shredded body, red with so much blood and eyes frozen in fear.

“You aided in fending off an attack. Well done. These are the victims from an earlier attack elsewhere that could have been avoided if we had more _priests_.

“You could have helped in that fight, but even more so, you might have saved these souls if you’d converted them instead of stealing an apple for one. If you took your vows seriously, that boy and his brethren could have sought sanctuary, but instead, they became cattle for the damned.”

Bile rose in Len’s throat, and once again, he couldn’t stop it. He turned his head and vomited on the stone floor. Only then did Lewis release him, derision clear in his tone as he backed away.

“You will return to your room and think on your sins, but I will ask again in the morning—who do you serve? Think carefully of your answer, child. You are running out of time.”

XXXXX

What did Father Lewis mean, Len wondered? But then, as he trudged back to his room, he knew. He couldn’t remain an acolyte forever. If he continued to fail the trials, eventually, he wouldn’t be given more chances. He’d be cast out, lose his robes, lose the safety they provided, and after that, he doubted he’d survive long on the streets.

Like Michael…

It was only when Len sat on his barren bed that he remembered he needed new sheets, but he didn’t feel like sleeping. He couldn’t bring himself to shed a tear for that poor boy and his fellows, he felt so numb.

An hour passed, maybe two, with Len sitting there in his robes, thinking of what he should do. In the trials, he didn’t remember he was in them, and so he doubted he would ever make a different call when the last trial came. Maybe eventually, if they wore down his spirit, he’d stop caring about an enemy who pleaded for mercy, but then, would he even care about protecting the innocent to pass the first trial?

What would be left of him if he believed that blindly?

The room was starting to brighten. The sun would be up soon, which meant the adventurers would be leaving the city, toward danger, yes, but at least toward something. If Len stayed here, maybe he could become a full priest someday and do more to help others.

Or, he could leave and help even more people by ending this blight at its source.

Leaping from the bed, Len took stock of his room. There was literally nothing he cared about other than what was already on his person.

Len raised his hood in case anyone was in the halls and snuck toward the storeroom that acted as their armory. He’d been taught basics in archery and swordplay since he was young, but only full priests were allowed to arm themselves. It was time he took what he was due.

After claiming a bag that he could sling across his body, Len filled it with a bedroll, soap, a torch, and a waterskin. Then he set to choosing a crossbow, the lightest he could find that allowed repeating rounds. He took as many bolts as he felt sensible to carry, some for his bag, others for the pouches on his belt, which he also replaced with a belt that could sheath a dagger, and he took one of those as well.

The temple seemed brighter when he moved on, so he hurried to fill his waterskin in the kitchen, as well as the remaining space in his bag with food.

The halls remained empty—until he neared the main hall leading out the temple’s front gate, and the _Lord of Central_ walked past.

Len froze. Lord Darhk, the human noble who ruled Central City and its surrounding lands, was suddenly a person-length away. He held his breath, and somehow the lord didn’t notice him, heading swiftly for Father Lewis’s chambers.

Len flattened himself to the wall, certain that guards or personal attendants would follow, but no one else appeared. Lord Darhk was alone.

Peering around the corner after him, Len saw Father Lewis meet the lord in the hall. They spoke hushed for a moment before exiting into Lewis’s chambers. The door to the room across from the chambers was open. Len had never seen that door open. Only full priests were ever allowed inside.

Knowing Father Lewis was occupied, Len took a chance and hurried into the room, quickly shutting the door behind him. The remains of incense lingered and there was still a candle lit. This room had no windows, but Len saw now what it contained.

Amulets, books or prayer, extra robes, and the stoles of the clergy. Acolytes and priests wore different stoles, but they were nearly identical so that the people would treat acolytes with as much respect as anyone higher ranking. The only difference was that a priest’s stole had an additional layer of silver stitching as well as added rays around the sunbursts on each of its ends.

The adventurers hadn’t noticed Len’s station last night, but fearing they might in the brighter light of day, he traded for a priest’s stole, took a book of prayers, and would have taken more if he had room, but an adventurer needed to travel light.

Before he was about to leave, he noticed a chest at the end of the room, hidden in shadow. It was simply adorned but seemed like something that should have been locked. It wasn’t, but there was a presence about it that drew Len in.

“ _Detect_ ,” he said with a wave of his hand, and a glow emanated from inside.

He knelt before it and carefully lifted the lid.

Dust? Not gold, but maybe silver or diamond dust.

Len ran his fingers through the substance, and though it shimmered, it felt soft like powder. It had to be a spell component, and very powerful if it was kept here, so he took an empty pouch from his belt and filled it with as much as he could.

The sun was halfway up when he hurried from the temple with his spoils. He met no one and not once did he think of looking back at the home he hoped to never see again.

“You see!” Nate exclaimed, when Len cleared the last street corner toward the west gate. “Told you he’d show.”

“Never doubted it,” Ray said, proud and noble looking in his elven armor.

“Gotta be wrong once in a while,” said Mick, sporting a pleased smirk. “And glad of it. You ready?”

_Come…_

Len felt a tingle all through him. He was nervous, but he chose instead to feel excitement. “Ready.”

XXXXX

“You’re letting him leave?”

“What other choice do we have?”

“He is our one chance—”

“Exactly.”

Father Lewis turned to look at Lord Darhk, who stood beside him in the bell tower that faced the west gate where Len was leaving with the half-race adventurers who’d invaded the city yesterday.

After witnessing their battle against the ghouls, Lewis had made sure to have them watched and learn everything he could. He had easily guessed the decision Len would make after failing the trials yet again.

“They seek Lord Bartholomew,” Lewis said. “Let them try. Len might never have become a full priest, and the attacks would surely only intensify. At least this way, there is hope.”

“The King will have our heads if we don’t end this.” Darhk scowled in distress. “You were supposed to take care of things, to train the darkling and turn him toward our cause. He is not ready.”

“He is out of time. We all are. And you’d do well to fear the High Priest more than the King.” Lewis returned his attention to the disappearing party, who unknowingly bore all the kingdom’s hopes on their shoulders—Len in particular. “Either he will prove ready and kill the vampire lord, or Bartholomew will claim his prize.”

XXXXX

Outside, the road was long and the sun brighter and hotter than Len ever could have imagined. He’d never been in the open like this. He’d never left the city and had to pull his hood lower as a headache began to form with terrible nausea reminding him that he hadn’t eaten. He didn’t want to seem weak and pull something from his pack if the others hadn’t yet.

“Here.” Mick thrust something at him. It appeared to be two dark glass discs bound together by wire.

“What is it?”

“For your eyes. Hook the ends around your ears and the sun won’t sting as much. Used to use those for protection against alchemy fire and armor fixes, but I have a better pair now.”

“Thank you.” Len hooked the wires around his ears as told. The discs covered his eyes and made the world instantly dimmer. “Amazing…”

Mick gave a rough pat to his shoulder before moving ahead to join Nate, whose nose was dug into his book with the moving map. Len smiled within his hood. He doubted he’d ever get used to casual touch.

“A bit of cheese might help too.” Ray handed him a wedge. “Something salty does for me when I’m feeling off.”

“Thank you.” Len accepted the wedge as well but wished he had more to offer than gratitude. He wanted to pull his weight when the time came. “Sir Natha—I mean, _Nate_ —does the tale of Lord Bartholomew tell us how to get into the barrier once we find its entrance?”

They had been traveling for hours. The road was devoid of any trees, and they didn’t appear to be headed toward any. They didn’t appear to be heading toward anything other than a barren expanse of dusty plains.

Nate looked like he should be overburdened with his bag of books and several attached to his belt, but he moved as though completely unencumbered, leading them along their path. “Like I said last night,” he explained without looking up, “the barrier is crumbling. We’ll be able to get in.”

“More easily in than out.” Mick rumbled with excited laughter.

“Do you… really worship the Dark Goddess?” Len asked softly.

Mick grinned back at him. “Why? Think we eat babies?”

“I-I—”

“Ignore him,” Ray said with a lighter laugh. “The truth isn’t like the stories. Why should who we worship matter if we are good to one another? I believe in the Sun God, but in a more merciful and welcoming version than the laws say. Nate follows the Twilight God because he pursues knowledge and magic above all. And Mick follows the Dark Goddess for her… encouragement of independence.”

Mick spoke like reciting an oath, loudly to the open air:

_“Compassion within reason,  
Justice over law,  
Passion before apathy,  
And freedom for all!”_

He turned back to Len. “Does enjoying good food, good ale, and a brawl from time to time make me a monster?”

“I suppose not,” Len said.

“You’re a bit of a monster when you’ve gone without food, ale, or a brawl for too long,” Nate snickered.

Mick shoved him so hard, he stumbled—but didn’t drop his book.

Len started to laugh, but then his head throbbed, and he grimaced with a rub at his temple.

“Sun still getting to you?” Ray asked. “Nate! Levitate this, won’t you?” He unhooked his shield and held it above Len’s head.

“ _Float_ ,” Nate said with a half-hearted wave, and when Ray released the shield, it remained aloft, protecting Len like the awning of a building.

“Thank you,” Len said—for the third time. “I hope I won’t be more bother than help on this mission.”

“Nonsense,” Ray dismissed. “We’re not expecting a great warrior. We need a priest. We’ll look out for you on the battlefield and off. Don’t be afraid to say if something’s bothering you, friend. Otherwise, how will we know?”

The ease from the heat made it easier to smile back at Ray, and Len was even able to pull his hood down.

“Besides, it won’t matter once we reach the barrier,” Nate said. “It’s a land run by a mad vampire. They don’t have sunlight there.”

“Truly?”

“So say the tales.”

A land without sunlight. Len felt a little guilty looking forward to that.

Nate’s progression slowed, the rest of them gathering around him as they appeared to have reached a fork. “The most concentration of monster activity lately has been here.” Nate pointed to a spot on his map, then to another the opposite direction. “But also here…”

“Which is the source?” Mick pressed.

“Uh…” Nate looked both ways and shrugged. “Flip a coin?”

_Come to me…_

Len felt that tingle again, with added relief from the heat washing over him as he turned toward the north. “That way.”

The others stared at him. 

“You’re certain?” Nate squinted. 

Len nodded.

“Does the Sun God speak to you, Brother Len?” Ray asked.

“It’s… just a feeling, but I know I’m right.”

His new friends exchanged curious glances but came to a silent agreement.

“Better than a coin toss.” Nate slammed his book shut. “Let’s go.”

They continued for several more hours, resting, eating, or relieving themselves as needed, while keeping a consistent pace. When the sun was getting low enough that Len returned the shield to Ray, Nate announced they should stop completely for the day.

“Best we setup camp before the sun sets. It’s not likely we’ll have a quiet night.”

“You think we’ll be attacked?” Len asked.

Looking around, there were still no trees. Finally, in the distance, Len could see hills and forests, but none near them to offer protection. The road had been quiet, with few travelers setting out these days. Len had forgotten to fear enemies lying ahead.

“Monsters have been invading your city for weeks,” Nate reminded him, “and we’re heading closer to their home.”

“Right… Are there no maps of the old fief to say how close we might be?”

“Sadly, no. Keystone’s not noted anywhere on modern maps, but my guess is we’ll reach it early morning.”

“Keystone?”

While Ray began to setup a canopy for shelter, and Mick pulled wood from his pack, Nate dug out his map book again and showed it to Len. “As it was once called. I’m guessing… here.” He circled a large area near them. “Some stories mention a great waterfall by the lord’s castle. Perhaps we’ll see it.”

Len felt a nervous twinge at the thought of reaching the vampire lord’s castle, though he knew that was the plan.

“Ready when you are, Nate,” Mick called. He’d setup the wood for a fire, and Nate waved his hand with little thought. 

“ _Ignite_.”

The camp was small but cozy, the company better than any Len had ever known, to the point that he could almost forget that their true mission was to face untold dangers.

Thinking too hard on that brought back Len’s nausea, even though the sun setting was usually a blessing, and he could finally remove his sunshades.

“I didn’t get to ask before,” he broached of his new friends as they sat around the fire, “but how did you all meet? You’re not exactly an average party.”

“Above average to be sure,” Mick snorted. 

“Mick and Nate met first,” Ray said.

“I graduated from the Wizards Academy when I was your age,” Nate began, “eager to learn everything I could. I headed away from Star City, figuring I’d only learn more of the same, and set out to discover if it was true that dwarves can’t wield magic, so I ended up in Bludhaven.”

“Dwarves can’t wield magic?” Len asked.

“Of course they can,” Mick said with a huff. “As much as anyone from any other race. Depends on the person! But you can’t go throwing fireballs when you live in caves.”

“Mick did once anyway,” Nate said as an aside. “Well, not a fireball, but one of his bottles of alchemy fire.”

“There was a spider!” Mick defended.

Len and the others laughed.

“It was a big spider,” he muttered.

“So, you grew up with the dwarves?” Len asked.

“Half the time. Half with my mother’s tribe.”

“Your parents aren’t together?”

“They love each other, but they work better apart. Besides, Father’s dutybound as king to stay with his wife.”

Len was certain the crackling of the fire must have distorted that sentence. “You’re… the son of the dwarven king? You’re a _prince_?”

“I’m a bastard,” Mick clarified, “but a loved one. My full-dwarf brothers treat me better than each other. No threat of me taking the throne someday. My parents meet up every so often to rekindle their passions. The dwarven queen has her own lovers, so no one cares.”

The idea of such a thing happening—at least openly—in the Prime Kingdom would have been unheard of, but Len supposed anything was possible where the Sun God held less power.

“Just don’t ever ask him how a dwarf and a giant make it work,” Nate said.

“With a footstool and a lot of luck!” Mick chortled.

They laughed again.

“I wanted to meet the giants next,” Nate continued, “so when I was ready to leave Bludhaven, Mick accompanied me.”

“Haven’t been able to get rid of him since.” Mick shoved Nate, almost toppling him into Len’s lap.

“When I was twenty-one,” Ray spoke next, seated on Len’s other side, “I set out to decide if I should leave the guard for broader endeavors. I wasn’t sure yet. I’d been with them since I was eighteen. The three of us have been back to Star City a few times, but it’s only recently I made the decision to stay on the road for good.”

“Coz he finally knows what fun’s like!” Mick shoved Ray like he had Nate, though Ray managed to stay upright. 

Ray beamed like he wouldn’t have things any other way. “We first met when I came upon these two fighting off some bandits.”

“Ray,” Nate said with a pat of his stomach, “I’m getting hungry over here.”

“On it!” Ray scrambled to his feet and started sifting through his pack for provisions to pass around. Len had expected to fend for himself, but they’d been sharing food since the start.

“Don’t tell him,” Nate caught Len’s attention with a low whisper, “but we were the bandits, he just didn’t realize.”

Len gaped.

“In our defense,” Mick added, “they were assholes.”

“Hungry, Brother Len?” Ray returned, none the wiser.

Len accepted the rations Ray handed him. For better or worse, this was the party he’d chosen to make his mark—and he didn’t think he’d have it any other way either. “Very much. Thank you.”

Nate and Mick shared a smile.

“What about you?” Mick asked Len. “How did a darkling become a priest of the Sun God when you hate the sun?”

“I don’t hate it.” Len hated the cold more. When there wasn’t a fire, there was the promise of morning. “Too much light can hurt anyone, I’m just more easily affected. Even the most devout human worshipper can be blinded by the sun or burnt, or so the mothers and fathers used to tell me, despite flinching if I ever touched them.”

“Flinching?” Nate said, reaching out to clamp a hand on Len’s forearm. “Why? Feel normal to me.”

“You don’t realize how unique you all are. In Central City, I’m reviled.”

Nate took his hand back, the others all looking at Len seriously now. 

“I… was abandoned, left at the temple as a babe. Everyone always whispered that my poor mother must have been set upon by villainous dark elves and taken against her will. Who knows? Maybe that is what happened. The order is all I’ve ever known, but what I’ve known… never included friends before.”

The jovial sharing of a meal turned to silent contemplation. Len worried he’d said too much, that he’d ruined this somehow, only for Mick to pull something from his belt and thrust it at him in offering.

“Wanna get drunk?”

Len released a shaky breath as the others chuckled.

“Don’t actually drink that.” Ray nudged Mick’s hand aside. 

“He makes it with alchemy,” Nate explained. “Practically pure alcohol.”

“Then only have a sip,” Mick insisted, thrusting the bottle at Len again. “Go on. To new beginnings! And to anyone who says you don’t deserve one— _fuck ‘em_.”

The sentiment was nicer than most things people had said to Len over the years, so he took the bottle, threw back more than a mere sip, and almost spat the vile substance right back up again.

“It’s awful!” he sputtered.

“You get used to it.”

They all laughed again, even Len despite his coughing.

A howl cut the night, and the others were on their feet with weapons ready in a heartbeat, while Len fumbled to follow, aiming his crossbow out into the darkness. They fell silent, each scanning the emptiness around them for the source of that howl.

Just a passing wolf—or worse?

They waited, craning their ears for any more sounds, but when a second howl finally came, it was significantly farther away.

“Gotta admit,” Mick said, as they lowered their weapons with a collective sigh, “figured we’d be set upon by now. Maybe we did head the wrong way at that fork.”

“I’m sorry if I—”

“Don’t be,” Ray interrupted Len smoothly. “Your gut’s better than a guess.”

“If we don’t find the barrier tomorrow,” Nate said, sitting back down amidst his books, “we’ll just head the other way. No loss.”

 _Other than time_ , Len thought, and the threat of more attacks taking out innocents in the city.

Like Michael.

The thought of that poor elf boy emboldened Len, but selfishly, he also didn’t mind putting off reaching the barrier a while longer. The other questions he had for his friends were about ghouls, vampires, werewolves, and anything else they might encounter on this journey, yet he knew if he asked, he might spook himself into running all the way back to Central.

They let Len take first watch, and he was amazed at how quickly the others fell asleep. Nate had set a magical timer that appeared like a faintly green glowing hourglass above the fire. Len tried not to watch it too closely. He was meant to be watching their surroundings, and while the others could all see well in the dark, his eyesight was the strongest at night.

Darkness wasn’t blackness to Len, it was calming, comforting, and made the world easier to take in. He could still see the distant hills and forests. The only way something could sneak up on them while he was on watch was if they became completely surrounded all at once.

Like now.

Len jumped to his feet, swinging his crossbow up at whatever seemed to be creeping closer. He should be able to see it. He could see advancing shapes, hulking, beast-like creatures, but he couldn’t make out any details. No matter which way he turned, there were more and more of them every direction. Soon, they were so close that the hills and forests had vanished from the horizon.

A green flash pulsed from the hourglass, sending a ripple of light into the distance. The spell was only visible to the one on watch and the one who was next, but even if the beasts couldn’t see the light, for one terrifying moment, Len saw them.

And they were all eyes and rows upon rows of teeth.

“My turn?” Ray said with a groggy yawn.

Len whirled toward him, only to realize that in the moment he blinked, the creatures were gone, no advancing shadows, nothing but the hills and far-off trees.

“Is everything all right?” Ray asked, as he got up to gather his sword and shield.

“I…” Len couldn’t speak with his heart in his throat, but eventually, he had to nod. “I think the night was just playing tricks me.”

Or so he hoped.

XXXXX

_“That’s it, my love. Come.”_

Len opened his eyes to a familiar ceiling. For once, he was fully clothed upon the plush bed as if he had merely laid down for a nap.

He was alone, and the solitude prompted him to rise. He was used to the bed, but he wasn’t sure he remembered the room. He must still be groggy from dozing.

The chambers were perfectly circular, with grand wardrobes and bookcases along the walls, and possibly the largest bathtub Len had ever seen in an area for a washroom. As beautiful as the décor was, with tapestries woven of bright colors, he found himself drawn to the archlike window.

It had glass panels that opened outward, and they were open now, revealing the hazy light of dawn. The tower was incredibly high up, like the highest point in a castle, looking down upon rolling hills, flower fields, a river—and a breathtaking waterfall nearby. The sun still made Len squint as he took it all in, but it was like living inside a painting, made up of more colors than the naked eye could normally see. 

But it wasn’t dawn, he realized. It was dusk. The colors along the horizon were a similar swath of rose-colored twilight, but the sun was setting. It dropped abruptly and cast the land in shadow, and an unexpected chill washed over Len as nightfall descended.

“It’s still beautiful, isn’t it?” a smooth voice, melodic and light, preceded the slide of long arms around Len’s waist. A body almost identical in height to his own molded against his back and held him close, with the whisper of cool breath on his neck.

The nighttime view was beautiful. The stars were endless and the moon full above them. Below, the darker shades of blue and deep purple in the landscape that Len could see where human eyes might have only seen black made the waterfall sparkle in contrast like precious diamonds.

It still seemed so cold…

The angel tightened his hold on Len and pressed soft lips where his breath had first kissed. “None of it compares to you, my love. You are so close now. Keep coming. Closer…”

The cool hands that were splayed over Len’s stomach slid into the parting of his tunic and brought forth a shiver as they trailed up, and then down, and then lower to the edge of Len’s slacks.

Len was so cold now. He wanted to be touched. He wanted to be warmed. 

“My sweet Leonard… come to me!”

_“Len!”_

XXXXX

The shout jarred Len from his slumber, and he gasped at how freezing the night had become. Where was the fire? All he could see was mist.

And he was standing, with all his gear, alone—

“ _Len_ ,” Ray’s voice was clearer now as a firm hand gripped Len’s shoulder and turned him around. The others were running up out of the dark, and in the distance—very far in the distance—Len could see the last fading embers from their fire.

“You might have warned us that you were the type to wander in your sleep,” Mick grumbled. “Had you at my back for barely a breath on last watch, and suddenly you were gone.”

“I…” Len fumbled to think of a reply. What had he been dreaming? He couldn’t remember. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. I didn’t mean—”

“Hang on.” Nate came forward, eyes wide as he looked beyond Len, and then walked past him.

They were all laden with full gear and packs. Adventurers must be used to striking camp in a hurry.

Ray patted Len’s shoulder, and while Mick looked mildly annoyed, he nudged Len teasingly as well. Nate remained enamored with the mist—a wall of mist that didn’t appear to be anywhere but in front of them.

“ _Detect_ ,” Nate said with the raise of his palm, and through the mist glowed the outline of huge double doors larger than a full-blooded giant would have needed. When the light faded, so too did the mist from the doors as if beckoning them to knock.

“You’re forgiven.” Mick nudged Len again. 

“You are truly blessed by the Lord of Law,” Ray added in awe. 

Nate reached forward to touch the doors, but before he made contact, they parted. On the other side was more mist, revealing nothing, but this was obviously the barrier they sought.

“I was ready to be awake anyway.” Nate looked back at the others with a smile. “Shall we?”

Len willed himself not to shake, staying in back with Nate, while Ray and Mick moved forward to lead.

The doors shut so suddenly behind them, they jumped—especially since there were no doors anymore to have shut, only the mist.

“Huh,” Nate said, while Len’s heart was in his throat again. Nate took the map book from his belt and opened it to the usual pages, but though the map itself was the same, all the monster activity had vanished.

And it didn’t feel like a blessing.

“That’s disconcerting,” Ray voiced what Len was thinking. If they couldn’t see where the highest concentration of threats might be, they couldn’t avoid them.

“Well, are we here to slay a vampire and his horde or not?” Nate hooked his book back onto his belt and gestured ahead into the hazy unknown. “Onward?”

The others didn’t hesitate, moving forward with weapons ready, and all Len could do was follow.

TBC...


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took so long, but it's over 10k. o_O
> 
> Enjoy!

So recently, the last thing Len remembered was dreaming. The memories were vague—the touch of his angel, and a view at night of breathtaking scenery.

He wished he was dreaming now, lost in the mist with three men who were little more than strangers. Len liked his companions. Ray, Nate, and Mick were better men than any he’d met, even if they were strange—and Mick served the Lady of Chaos. What mattered was that Len trusted them and believed they would keep him safe, at least to the best of their abilities.

But what might they have to save him from?

“Hold up,” Ray called, his voice a faint whisper at Len and Nate in the back, as Ray and Mick continued forward like walls of brute force.

Then Len saw why he had told them to stop.

Bodies were coming into view on all sides and littered along their path. Some were fresh and rank with decay, others gnawed to husks, and many more down to mere bones. This was indeed where the monsters gathered when on their way outside the barrier. So where were they?

Ray and Mick urged them onward, but the cloying fear of what living things they might encounter in the mist made Len wonder if he was dreaming still, because he was walking into a nightmare. Bile tinged the back of his throat like was so common lately as they stepped around bodies and bones.

“What we fought the other night was ghouls,” Len recounted to Nate, hushed but desperate to know more as they moved forward. “I could tell they weren’t like the vampires or spawn I’d heard of, but… I don’t understand the difference.”

“We’ll face more than vampires,” Nate said, looking around curiously, for once not lost in his books.

Len thought of the creatures he’d seen while on watch—or thought he’d seen—surrounding him with eyes and teeth like formless evil in the dark. 

“Ghouls are what they are because they were drained of blood and fed vampire blood in return,” Nate continued, “but they’re mindless because they didn’t get enough to fully effect the change. It’s an awful curse, because they’re basically no better than undead. They can never become human again, but they can never regain their wholeness or become a greater vampire either. They’re fodder, foot soldiers for their creators, and stuck forever as what was made of them.

“Spawn are different. Made the same way but having received enough vampire blood to keep their sanity intact. They aren’t fully autonomous, however, because whatever their maker asks of them, they’ll do, even if it’s to sacrifice themselves or kill their dearest loved ones. They’re lucky though, because if their maker is slain, they can become human again.”

Len longed for water to clear the dryness in his throat. The amount of bodies in their path wasn’t lessening. Behind them, outside the barrier, it had to be morning by now, but there was nothing but darkness and mist here.

Why weren’t the monsters attacking?

“Full vampires are different still,” Nate went on, spewing forth such awful facts, while never showing any signs of the horror Len felt. “They can change shape. At least one other form. Though specific abilities are tied to the vampire’s original race. They can be created by magic or a curse, like is said of Lord Bartholomew. They’re subservient to no one, but like ghouls, full vampires can never become human again.

“And then there are the brides.”

“Brides? What—”

Nate hushed him—because Ray and Mick had stopped.

They had reached the edge of the mist.

Len hesitated to move up beside the others, as Nate did, because they were all just staring. With a quick breath, he forced himself to be brave and moved to stand by Ray, and what he saw beyond the mist and bodies they’d surpassed was the most unbelievable sight yet.

A village, normal and quaint, stood not far in the distance. There was no sunlight, but it was clearly daybreak, because there were villagers moving about, and children running and playing.

And they were children of _all_ kinds, even dark elves, which Len had never seen in person, as well as other darklings like him, able to walk in the daytime without worry, because it was always night here.

“At least we can ask for directions,” Nate said, gesturing ahead with a smile.

Ray and Mick sheathed their weapons, and Len had to admit, while he’d been unprepared for this turn, he saw no threat either, only people.

 _His_ people.

As they approached, the laughing children halted and hurried to find their parents. The adults turned to gauge these newcomers, and someone ran off to fetch someone specific, a man who Len assumed ran the town once he came forward, since he carried authority in his strides.

He was a dark elf, tall and broad like the largest of humans. His skin was as black as the night sky, his irises just as dark, and his ears stretched out from his head as long and pointed as a high elf’s.

“Welcome to Nightfall,” he said. “I’m John, mayor of our village.”

“I thought it was Keystone,” Len said.

“It was once. But… well.” John raised a hand toward the nighttime sky, where there were no signs of light on the horizon.

“It’s not often we get new people out of the mist,” a woman said, one of the few humans Len could see, coming forward with two darkling children clinging to her that made Len realize she was their mother and John likely her husband. “You weren’t attacked by the lord’s minions?”

“No,” Ray offered. “We had a clear path through the barrier. That’s rare?”

“Very,” John said. “The lord must want you here.”

“Lord Bartholomew?” Nate asked.

John and his wife bowed their heads at the mention. More from the village were spilling out of their homes. It was a modest town, small enough that word spread quickly of strangers, but still large enough that Len couldn’t see every building in a single view.

“You serve him?” Mick asked.

“Do we have a choice?” John’s wife replied.

“This is Lyla, my beloved,” John introduced her. “And she is right. If Bartholomew wishes anyone dead or… taken, there is little we can do, but the circle protects us.” He lifted a hand to indicate posts spaced evenly around the village, the top of each glowing a faint blue that Len would have missed if it hadn’t been pointed out to him. “We know you’re not monsters in disguise, or you wouldn’t have been able to get past them. Bartholomew’s horde travels by here on its way out the gates, now that the barrier is fading.”

“You know the barrier is fading?” Nate questioned.

“Of course. We’ve seen all type of creature escaping through the mist.”

“Why don’t some of you try to leave then?” Ray asked.

John and Lyla shared pensive looks, and others who had begun to gather looked down as if in mourning.

“A few did,” John said. “I’m sure you saw what became of them.”

Len felt that familiar bile stir in the back of his throat. The bodies, whether fresh, rotted, or merely bones, had been people of this village once.

“If you mean us no harm, and the lord has no quarrel with you,” John said, “then you are welcome here. You may trade and go about our village as you please. And well timed. We have a festival tonight, a yearly celebration of a good harvest, which is why our children are in such good spirits. They know that tonight they can eat their fill of whatever sweets they find.” He seemed a serious man, but when he smiled at his children, they giggled excitedly back at him.

“Besides,” Lyla said, “you’re a good omen. One of you is a darkling. You truly must carry the mark of our lord.” She bowed her head at Len, and given she was speaking of a _vampire_ lord’s blessing, Len wasn’t sure how to take that.

“Thank you.” Nate bowed in kind, first to Lyla, and then to John. “We won’t cause trouble, but what we seek is a way to your lord’s castle.”

The children ran off, but Lyla remained close, clearly a partner in running the town as much as she was in marriage. Len might have paid more attention to the ensuing conversation, but Mick excused himself to find local fare, and Ray went off to get to know the people, which left Len feeling unsure where he belonged.

The path to the lord was easy, it seemed, merely onward, following the river and the villages around it until they reached the waterfall. Len wondered if every village here was filled with similar people, races of all kinds living together without reprimand. Len had been taught that dark elves were akin to monsters, but nothing about John seemed evil.

Talk of maps and route options fell away as Len looked around at other villagers, who would smile and nod and move on, like nothing was out of the ordinary about seeing another darkling. John and Lyla’s children ran about, playing with humans, dark elves, high elves, and other races alike, and drawing Len to follow them behind a row of houses.

If these people served the Lady of Chaos in ways bloodier than Mick, they hid it well.

Len pitched forward, something scratchy and heavy slamming into him from behind, as the gaggle of children ran past.

“Slow down!” someone called. “You wouldn’t want this haybale to fall on _you_ , would you? Oh no! Sir? Did I strike you? I swear I didn’t mean to!”

Len turned at the gentle voice to find a young man not much older than he was, maybe as old as Ray and Nate, but human with a smile—a face—an _everything_ —that almost made Len trip again on absolutely nothing.

He was stunning.

Though his clothes were modest and dusty from hauling the haybale, they looked well made, with deep brown slacks, leather boots and belt, and a burgundy shirt loosely tied together at the top with hide. The rich color matched his eyes—

No. That was silly. His eyes weren’t ruddy brown, they were green, though that also complimented the shirt’s hue. With his sleeves rolled up, the lean line of his muscles was evident, and from lack of sun, his skin was a soft cream with rosiness in his cheeks from exertion. His dark hair was neatly trimmed but tousled in a way that let a stray lock fall into his eyes, and he paused to flick it with a finger.

Beautiful.

And so familiar…

“Did I knock the words from you lips, stranger?” he asked with his sweet smile. “Unless you can’t speak? I’m sorry if—”

“I can speak,” Len forced his mouth to work. The children had long since run off, meaning it was just him and this angelic-faced human behind the houses. “I’m Len. We just arrived.”

“Barry.” He held out a hand, and Len realized he was being offered it—a human was offering for them to touch.

Len lifted his own hand but wasn’t sure what to do.

Barry laughed and grasped his forearm in a firm squeeze. “Pleasure to meet you, Len. Sorry about the haybale. The children surprised me. They’re just excited for the festival. I need to move this into the barn. Would you like to help me? If you’re not too burdened.”

Len was still loaded for travel, complete with bag, belt, and a crossbow on his back, but he wasn’t about to let that stop him if it kept him in this man’s company a while longer.

“I can manage,” Len said, moving around one side of the haybale. It was tightly bound, but easy enough to lift by the twine. As they each took an end, however, it proved heavy enough that Len couldn’t imagine how Barry had lifted it on his own before now.

“So… we?” Barry asked during their slow shuffle toward the barn at the end of the row of houses.

“We?”

“You said we. ‘We just arrived’.”

“Oh! My party. My fellow adventurers. My friends. We haven’t known each other for very long, but they’re good men. There’s four of us. A wizard, a paladin, and a warrior. Though they’re more than what they seem. You’re a farmer?”

“And a wizard,” Barry said. “On occasion.”

It took them crossing the threshold into the barn for Len to register that statement. “Doesn’t that mean you could have levitated the haybale?”

“Where’s the sport in that?”

Len laughed, regardless of the strain in his arms when they finally dropped the bale between them. Barry hadn’t needed any help, and not only because he could have used magic. With a mighty heave, he lifted the bale over his head to place it with a stack of others in the loft, making the exposed muscles of his forearms ripple.

Len wondered what the muscles of his biceps, shoulders, and back would look like if he wasn’t wearing a shirt at all…

“What about you?”

“Huh?”

“What about your role?” Barry dusted his hands off on the sides of his trousers. “You said four members in your party but only listed three.”

“I’m a priest.”

“Of the Lord of Law?” Barry looked stricken, which caused Len to sound ensure when he answered.

“Yes?”

“Don’t say that loudly,” Barry said in a sudden hush, pulling Len closer by the arm. “Most villagers wouldn’t care, but some believe the lord of these lands is angered by worship of the Sun God.”

“That makes sense,” Len said, distracted by Barry’s lingering grip, stabilizing and warm. He had almost forgotten how cold he’d been when he woke up. “But… can’t everyone tell what I am from my robes?”

“How?” Barry stared at them.

Len looked down. Besides the colors, the only distinguishing marks that pointed to the Sun God were on his stole—which was _gone_ —and his amulet, hidden in the robe’s folds. He must have left the stole back at camp. How had he managed to gather everything else in his sleep but not that? “Never mind, I guess,” he said, making sure the amulet was securely hidden. “And no matter. I’m not exactly devout.”

“No?”

“I believe in the gods, but I have no allegiance.”

Barry tilted his head with a curious stare. “Yet your god still provides you power?”

“I don’t know why.”

At last, Barry’s hand slid away, but slowly, until the last alight of his fingers drifted from Len’s elbow. “Maybe because your intentions are pure. You are a healer after all.”

“I try to be. Although…”

“Although?”

“I’ve been known to have the hands of a thief at times.”

“A morally gray priest.” Barry grinned like that only intrigued him more. “Do I need to watch my pockets?”

“Only if you have something worthwhile in them.”

Barry’s eyebrows shot up.

“I didn’t mean—”

And then he laughed, almost doubling over as he stumbled back a step—only to trip over a leaning pitchfork into a pile of loose hay. Len tried to reach for him, but all he accomplished was grabbing after Barry’s arms and being pulled down on top of him.

The impact against Barry’s firm— _very_ firm—chest knocked the wind from Len, especially while carrying so much weight from his gear, and he gasped, though he was far more worried that Barry might have landed on something other than hay.

“Are you—” he sucked in a wheezing breath “—all right?”

“ _Shit_.” Barry coughed, though it soon dissolved into further laughter. “I swear… I am not usually so clumsy. Well, I _am_ … but there isn’t often someone around to witness it so spectacularly.”

Now Len’s coughs turned to laughter, and once they had caught their breaths, they were both laughing heartily.

Len pushed up, and the shift slotted their legs between one another’s, colliding their hips as tightly as their chests. He lost his breath again, looking down at Barry, who was staring up at him with that sweet smile, uncaring to how they were tangled.

“A-any wounds?” Len stuttered. He never stuttered. At least he could blame it on the fall.

“Maybe a lump on my head,” Barry said, reaching back with an earnest cringe.

“Here…” Len supported himself with one hand and moved to cradle the back of Barry’s head with the other. He didn’t feel a lump or any sign of bleeding, but still he whispered, “ _Heal_ ,” and instantly Barry was hallowed with light.

Like an angel.

While Len had never seen the man from his dreams clearly, he knew suddenly without a doubt that this was what he must look like.

“Better?” Len asked when the light dimmed.

“Much.”

Len should pull his hand free, get up, _move_ , but it was as if his body wasn’t listening. It felt so warm, so good to be in so much contact with someone else. Len couldn’t explain the sensation of finally being able to touch others, to have it be second nature without flinches or frowns. But this, to have his presence met with a smile, his touch savored, felt like he’d been starved all his life, and now he was overwhelmed by plentiful bounty.

“Are _you_ all right?” Barry asked.

“Sorry.” Len removed his hand and started to adjust himself to get up. “I was only—”

“Because I think,” Barry stopped him with a light grip on his robes, “your god must see something special in you.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Then maybe… your power comes from somewhere else.”

Len couldn’t imagine where, but the comment seemed sincere, and being kept in place atop Barry felt so intimate. Len should get up, but he couldn’t seem to move, as if hypnotized by Barry’s stare and how the space between them kept shrinking.

A squeal of delight preceded a rush of children storming into the barn, half a dozen now, most about Michael’s age, the thought of whom sobered Len, and with an apologetic smile, he rose to let Barry up.

The children were chasing each other, laughing and running about in unfettered joy. Len wished Michael could have known a day like this, in the company of many, none of whom would condemn him for his race or beliefs.

“ _Hey_!” Barry leapt at them with a playful shout, causing them to scatter with fresh giggles. “No running by the hay unless you want one to _crush_ you! Raaaawwwrrr!” He charged at them, roaring like a beast, and scooped up one child easily, who he hoisted over his shoulder.

It was John and Lyla’s boy, and once Barry had spun him around, he let him go, only to chase after another, until all the children went scurrying out of the barn.

Barry paused to catch his breath, leaning against the barn door with a radiant smile. It seemed he was reaching to press a hand to his chest, but his fingers curled around the cord of a necklace, its pendant hidden beneath his shirt.

A wizard’s amulet perhaps.

“I’ve never seen darkling children.” Len went up next to him. “Other than when I was one. It’s nice to see them happy.”

“John and Lyla’s twins, JoJo and Sara. There are no darklings where you’re from?”

“Or dark elves. And neither would be welcome.”

Barry looked surprised. Then sad. Then inviting and warm again, all in a flicker of emotions. “You are welcome here, Len. Now, come on. If we don’t chase them for a little while, they’ll never leave us alone.”

Barry reached back to grasp Len’s hand, pulling him after him out of the barn. He held on for several paces before letting go, and Len felt his heart stutter like his words before, foolishly longing to be in contact with Barry longer.

Len would have been seen as the monster Barry pretended to be if he’d ever chased after children back home.

Seeing that they had two pursuers, the children went off in different directions. Behind the houses was the perfect field for frolicking, without tall grass, and still within the protective circle. Len watched Barry capture another child, twirl them about, and then release them again, like it was the most marvelous game.

Len had fallen too far behind, weighted down by his pack and weapons, and stopped to drop it all in a heap, including his belt. He wasn’t sure if seizing children the same way Barry was would be welcome since they didn’t know him, but the darkling girl, Sara, saw Len coming and purposely darted toward him as if goading him to go after her.

So, Len did, and she released the most beautiful laughter when he hefted her over his shoulder and spun before letting her ‘flee’ from the attack.

The children could have kept on for ages, no doubt, but Barry soon paused for breath. He held up a hand, Len thought to plead for mercy, but then sparks flew up from his fingertips into the dark sky. There were no stars or moon, as if the mist coated everything above them, and yet there was a dim light to everything, beyond the array of lanterns around the village.

Still, the sky was dark enough that Barry’s sparks exploded brilliantly, forming the outline of an eagle in gorgeous gold that hovered in the sky, and then fell like glowing raindrops.

The children stopped to stare.

Barry shot up more sparks, and more, all exploding into animals before they fell.

A green bear.

A blue cougar.

A red wolf. 

The children danced beneath them, holding out their hands in hopes of catching the light, but when the sparks landed, they fizzled with jolts that made the children howl with laughter.

Barry muttered a lengthier spell that began a chain reaction of new shapes and colors so he could take a break. He joined Len with panted breath. “I promise my wizardry is more than parlor tricks, but they like it.”

Without further ceremony, Barry dropped to the ground and laid back in the grass, like many of the children were starting to do.

But Barry was the real wonder.

Len dropped down beside him. The sparks and the images they made were breathtaking. Stars to make up for lack of real ones in the images of a magical sword, shining knights, even a cluster of hearts.

“What else can you do then?” Len asked, keeping his eyes upward for fear that he would stare if he looked at Barry. He had to look at him, however, when there was no answer.

Barry was passing a hand over the grass between them. Slowly, grander than the shapes he had made in the sky, a deep pink lily with white edges grew up out of the ground and bloomed as beautifully as if it had been tended to for months. Barry plucked it and handed it to Len.

“Does this count as a parlor trick?” Barry said with a gentle laugh.

Len marveled at it, struck by its sweet scent and flawless petals. “I wondered how anything could grow here without the sun.”

“The land itself is unique. You won’t find a barren wasteland even where there are no wizards to help, but a little magic is useful to speed things along. It’s like tricking them into thinking they have sunlight anyway.”

“You can summon Sunlight?” Len sat up. “I’ve been meaning to learn—”

“No, I’m sorry. What I do is different. From what I’ve heard, only priests can summon true Sunlight. I’m sure you’ll manage eventually. Like I said, there’s something special in you.” Barry gazed back at Len like he found him more miraculous than the magic he’d performed, though Len couldn’t imagine why.

He was just… him.

“Beginning the celebration early, are you?”

Len startled at the voice that broke through the children’s laughter.

It was Ray, coming from around the houses with a group of hunters carrying bows. Len and Barry stood. The lightshow must have caught people’s attention, because Nate appeared too, still accompanied by John and Lyla, along with a few others that Len assumed were more parents. Finally, Mick came as well, carrying a bag that appeared to have pastries in it, for he was already eating one.

This was a pitstop, not their destination. They were on an adventure, a quest, and they had come here to slay a monster. What was he thinking, feeling so wholly like he… belonged when, if they succeeded, this place would once again become part of the Prime Kingdom?

That thought and seeing JoJo and Sara spinning each other in circles made Len feel like the wind had knocked from him again.

“Is something wrong?” Barry whispered.

“I—”

“More! More!” one of the children shouted, grasping Barry’s hand and pulling him back into the throng.

The sparks had stopped.

Barry gave Len an apologetic nod, allowing himself to be taken, and summoned another spell. 

Len didn’t want to abandon the lily just yet, so he tucked it into the sash of his robes.

Nate was looking over a map John must have given him, and he gestured Len and the others over. When Ray tried to peek into Mick’s bag, the half-giant horded it as if to say he had no intention of sharing, but Ray snagged one anyway with his swifter hands.

“See here, friends,” Nate said as they gathered.

The townsfolk gave them room, heading further into the field to watch the show with their children. The map was crudely drawn but detailed, showing them the path ahead.

“Straight-forward with villages along the way that should also have protective circles. We’ll only need to worry about attacks while between them. This is almost going to be easy.”

“Getting to the lord, sure,” Mick said, tucking the pastry bag under his arm when Nate tried to grab one. “But how do we kill him?”

“You haven’t thought of that?” Len gaped.

“Of course we have.” Nate accepted the pastry Ray handed him after managing to steal another, and then dropped his voice to a whisper. “But maybe don’t say we intend to kill their lord so loudly.”

“They have to know,” Mick whispered back, giving up and handing a pastry to Len, since Ray kept pawing at him. “Outside adventurers asking for a way to his castle? What else could we want?”

“That doesn’t mean we need to advertise our attentions any more than that.”

“We know why you’re here.”

They broke from their huddle, seeing John approaching. They should have known better than to think they were hushed enough, given how good non-human hearing could be, especially with elves and dark elves.

“Yet still you’re helping us.” Nate studied the man closely.

“If the lord let you in, he’s not afraid. He won’t punish us for leading you where he wants you to go.”

“But… he’s alone, isn’t he?” Len asked. Delicious as the pastry looked, he couldn’t stomach taking a bite. “He sent his horde away.”

“He has plenty more than any you might have encountered. Not to mention his brides, all fiercely loyal, who will protect him at all costs.”

“Brides?” Len turned to Nate. “You said that before. What are they?”

“A vampire lord’s favored progeny,” Nate said. “Some say independent vampires are stronger because they serve no one. In truth, it depends on the power of the bride’s maker, and if their maker dies, they become an independent themselves, and in turn can become a lord. What makes them dangerous is their loyalty.”

“How is one made compared to a spawn?”

“Rather than being drained and given blood in a single night, the vampire lord feeds on them only a little but still gives them some of their blood. The lord does this three times, and only on the third do they drain their victim completely.

“This builds a more powerful bond, impossible to resist. Brides are resistant to many ways you might think to kill them. You must dismember them, burn the remains, and sanctify the ground where you bury the ashes, or they can come back to life.”

Len really wished he had somewhere to throw his pastry.

“Sounds fun,” Mick said, already eating a second.

“Even that won’t be enough to ensure the lord stays dead,” John said. “He requires more.”

Len almost didn’t dare to ask. “More?”

“No one knows exactly, but even before the barrier started to fail, others would occasionally make it inside and venture forth to kill him. He always returns. They say it can only be permanent if tied back to how he was first cursed, but no one knows what that means.”

“A priest of the Sun God should be able to handle that!” Ray declared, giving Len a friendly nudge.

He hadn’t thought he could feel worse, but that managed it, having his secret announced openly when Barry had told him not to.

“Your holy fire.” Ray nudged him again, not getting the hint from Len’s silence.

“Others have tried that as well,” John said, casting Len a cryptic look. “Magic and prayer have their power, but they are not stronger than Bartholomew. _He_ is the only god here.”

“Papa!” one of the twins called.

John gave a parting nod and excused himself to join his family.

“Much as I hate to bring down anyone’s _good_ mood,” Ray commented on John’s disheartening countenance, “maybe we should stay here, at least until tomorrow, and come up with a better plan.”

“You may be right.” Nate folded the map to put it away. “Let’s see what this place has for accommodations.” At last, he started to eat his pastry.

Len still didn’t know what to do with his, though he could admit it smelled amazing. “I’ll catch up. I need to gather my things.”

More and more sparks were exploding across the sky, parents watching in equal wonder, though a few of the children were twirling about with Barry again. Len moved slowly to reclaim his gear, hoping Barry might steal away to talk to him.

Then he did.

“You’ll definitely want to eat that,” Barry said of the pastry. Len had been about to shove it into one of his belt pouches. “Best in any village in Nightfall. Will I see you later?”

The churning in Len’s stomach managed to turn into pleasant flutters. “For one night at least.”

“Good.” Barry glanced down, seeming pleased when he saw the flower peeking above Len’s sash. “I’ll find you at the festival, if not sooner. You won’t want to miss it.”

Barry went back to join the children.

Before Len’s stomach could protest, he took a large bite of the pastry. It was as good as it smelled, and he felt better the second it passed his lips.

XXXXX

Len found the others waiting outside the tavern. There wasn’t an inn, but there was a room at the tavern where they could stay—all four together on cots.

“Better than the ground,” Nate said, setting out the map and several of his books along the floor.

Len went to take a seat beside him, but Mick stopped him.

“Word of advice, even when playing with children and friendly strangers, while on an adventure, always keep at least one weapon with you.” He tapped the dagger on Len’s belt.

Len nodded, and though he unloaded his pack and crossbow, this time he didn’t remove the belt.

Nate recounted the tale of Lord Bartholomew to see if there were any clues as to how to slay him. “Maybe I missed something,” he paged through one of his books.

“I still think it’ll come down to Sunlight,” Ray said, returning Len’s stomach to awful churning.

“But there’s no sun here,” Mick reminded him.

“Who needs the real thing?”

“I don’t know how to summon it!” Len said in a rush. “I know I should, but… I must confess—”

“You’re not a full priest,” Nate broke in with his nose stuck in the book. “We know. But an almost priest is better than none.”

“You _know_?”

Mick snorted like it had been obvious.

Ray just smiled. “We didn’t know which prayers you could wield, but did you think we didn’t recognize your stole that first night? Too bad you lost your new one. It looked nice on you.”

There they went again, being wholly accepting of Len, even though he’d lied.

But this was life and death!

“What if I can’t do it? I won’t have you putting your faith in me, relying on me, only for me to let you down.”

“So, we’ll come up with a back-up plan,” Ray said.

“And a back-up plan for that back-up plan,” Mick added.

“And a back-up plan for that one,” Nate echoed. “Bartholomew can be killed. The trouble is keeping him dead. Perhaps we get him down to ashes, and then bring those ashes outside the barrier. Then he’ll see sunlight.” They went right on thinking of solutions, never once stopping to voice concerns or hurl accusations at Len.

They continued discussing all the spells and dismemberment and other gruesome ways they might rid these lands of the vampire lord that ruled them, none of them seeming afraid that they might fail.

Len envied them that, as well as their understanding, and tried to be brave in their wake.

Even so, when they decided to rest, eat, and explore more of the town, Len snuck behind the tavern, alone with his prayer book, wondering if he could teach himself to cast Sunlight without the help of an elder priest or the title as his own.

“ _Light_ ,” he cast for practice, a bright beacon in the dark, narrow alley.

Then he simply tried to will it to the next level, reaching deep within to cast a brighter beacon. “ _Sunlight_.”

The glow from his hand looked no brighter than before.

Len sagged. He knew it wouldn’t be that easy. Once he learned a spell, it could be, but the beginning often relied on careful, guided meditation to find the source for the right spell.

His prayer book said the same, and he tucked it back into his belt to free his hands. He unhooked the high collar of his robes, hoping a few deeper breaths might help, and pulled his amulet from the robe’s folds to hold onto it.

Centering oneself could be done even in a noisy city street, and this small village, though alive with kind strangers, only had the faint ambient noise of a few people going about their day.

Len tried to reach beyond that, to listen for the wind, the trees, the birds—but there was nothing. The mist must keep everything cloaked like a thick blanket.

Surrendering to that stillness, Len called to mind a radiant image of the sun. Conjuring it behind his eyes meant it didn’t burn or make him feel dizzy. The thought of its heat was welcome, and it was beautiful, whether high in the sky or painting colors above the horizon.

It might not exist in this land of night, but Len reached for the sun in his mind, keeping one hand on his amulet, and feeling his raised palm heat up like warming itself by a fire.

Len could feel it, the source he needed, and opened his eyes as he began to pray, “ _Sun_ —”

A dark elf child burst from around the corner into Len’s line of fire.

He snapped his mouth shut and swung his already glowing hand behind his back. The sun could be a nuisance to darklings like him, but it was deadly to dark elves.

The child stopped when he saw Len, not one of the ones from before, and so he didn’t know Len and looked afraid—only for Barry to prove to be the one chasing him, scooping him up and sending the child into a fit of giggles.

“Len,” Barry said when he noticed him. “I hope you’re not lying in wait to pick pockets. Get on back to the others now.” He lightly swatted the child’s behind as he let him go, and off the little dark elf went.

Len quickly brought his hand forward now that the glow was gone. He didn’t want to seem like he was genuinely up to no good.

Barry approached but frowned when his gaze dropped from Len’s eyes to his neck. “I didn’t notice that before.” As assuredly and unafraid as ever, he reached out to trace his fingers along the line of Len’s scar, visible now with his collar undone.

Len shivered.

“Sorry.” Barry withdrew, as if only then realizing he’d acted without meaning to. “May I ask how it happened?”

“I don’t know. I’ve always had it, since I was a babe.”

“At least you don’t have to remember getting it then. I hear you’re staying for the festival. Would you like to help me with some of the food preparations? The children can’t keep my attention all day. There are many others working on the feast, but another pair of hands would be welcome.”

“I…” Len should keep practicing, but then, he supposed they still had a long journey ahead of them. There was time to get the spell right. “I would be glad to.”

“Then maybe you can tell me more about these thieving hands.” Barry took one in his own to lead Len out of the alley, but even once they surfaced onto the street, this time, he didn’t let go. 

“I suppose the best place to start would be with Master Jorgen, who I have thoroughly enjoyed torturing for many years.”

XXXXX

Barry was sweet and charming and so warm—his touch and his presence. He cast magic as second-naturedly as Nate did, though without ever consulting a book. It was simple things, like levitating vegetables from one table to another and have a carving knife chop them on its own while mid-conversation, but he did so as easily as breathing.

The village was small, but Len was still amazed how Barry seemed to know everyone by name. He had no family, and didn’t say how that had come to be, but given the nature of these lands, Len could guess. He didn’t understand, however, how someone so wonderful wasn’t already married or claimed by a lover.

At least, Len didn’t think he was.

The feast was mainly being prepared in the shops and homes around the town square, to make it easier to bring it all out onto banquet tables later. If not for the daytime darkness and mix of races, Len could have believed this was any normal village back in the Prime Kingdom.

His friends found him eventually, each having gone off on their own. Ray had caught up to the hunting party to practice with his bow. He’d managed to catch the largest of the wild boars they’d tracked for the feast. Hunting parties were the only people who left the village. Traveling between towns was almost unheard of. The chance of being attacked was less likely during the day, but since there was no _day_ , it wasn’t impossible. The hunters returned calling Ray good luck, because they hadn’t spotted a single monster while he was with them.

Mick had initially gone back for more pastries—ones he didn’t share—and investigated the local blacksmith. Her craftsmanship was good, but she had very little stock, since metal was scarce. Mick sold her a few alchemy bottles to make the most of what she did have.

Len told himself it was out of kindness and not just the excitement of flaming weapons.

Nate stuck with John, learning everything he could about the village, the lands of Nightfall, and what might await them at Lord Bartholomew’s castle, but it didn’t seem there was much more to learn other than what they already knew.

It was nearly time for the festival when Len finished catching up with them all. The whole party was recruited to bring food out onto the tables, so Len was finally able to introduce them to Barry.

“Sounds like you’ve all had a full day,” Barry said as they set out the many wonderful smelling dishes. “But I hope you’ll leave more talk of your adventuring for tomorrow. It’s time for you to see why we call this place Nightfall.”

“Isn’t it because it’s always night here?” Nate asked.

“It’s always _dark_ here.” Barry pointed up at the sky. “But night is still night.”

Almost as if he cast a spell just then, the haze above them dissipated. There was no daytime, but there was night—and it stole Len’s breath away as much as toppling upon Barry had earlier.

Len had never known the night sky could hold so much color. The stars were in clusters like swaths of fairy dust, backed by midnight blue fading into emerald that swirled into purples and pinks. The moon was full, and it was all so close, as if they had climbed the tallest mountain and could touch the heavens if they simply tried.

Just like a dream…

“Wow.”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Barry said in his smooth melodic voice.

Len turned to answer but found Barry’s eyes were not on the sky.

“I almost like this place.” Mick startled Len with a clap on the back. “Good food, good people, and a damn good view. Let’s eat!”

The village felt larger with everyone packed into the square, eating and drinking, with music playing and people dancing. The children had not lost any of their energy, and the endless sweets they were allowed meant they wouldn’t for quite some time.

The bustle of it all meant Len lost Barry during the feast. Villagers kept coming up to him and his friends, curious about the strangers. The more people drank and made merry, the more they insisted that Len and the others be drunk and merry too. Len was glad of it, he’d never known such welcome, but the only merrymaking he really wanted included sweet smiles and green eyes.

Finally, when the tables were moved to the edges of the square, Len spotted Barry again, forefront among those filling the space for more dancing.

And oh what a dancer he was, such elegance and rhythmic motion for a purported klutz. He was mesmerizing, all Len’s attention going right to him amid the wild affair of people of all ages and races switching partners at random to swing each other around.

It would have been easy for Len to join in, but just when he was about to, the music changed, and Barry was swept up by a young man, tall and handsome and _human_ , who held him close.

Maybe Barry did have a lover.

Maybe before he was only being nice…

“What crawled up your ass?” Mick asked when Len flopped down beside him at one of the bonfires. There were four, one in each corner of the square. Mick had chosen the one closest to the table of sweets and held a full mug of ale while munching on cake.

“Too much food and drink. I need a break.”

Mick grunted acknowledgment.

Nate and Ray were there also, further spread out around the fire. Nate was in mid-magical history rant to a gaggle of villages too inebriated to possibly follow him.

“It’s a truly ingenious spell. The swarm of rats means there’s no cleanup. They devour everything!”

“What about weapons and gold?” a less glassy-eyed half-elf asked.

“They eat that too, but when the rats disappear into the earth as clay, anything that wasn’t alive is left behind, and as clean and shiny as brand new. I believe it was the great wizard Prismo who—”

Ray was surrounded by some of the hunting party again, showing off the craftsmanship of his bow. It had beautiful elven carvings along it, whereas the bows of the villagers were plain.

That was when Len realized that Nate and Ray weren’t merely being friendly with the locals; they were eyeing the woman and men around them with interest— _equal_ interest, no matter the race or how feminine or masculine the partner.

Returning his attention to Mick, Len noted that while there were villagers around the half-giant as well, but he seemed more focused on food and ale.

“You’re not interested in _that_ kind of chaos?” Len pointed to a nearby couple, who had already fallen prey to their passions, kissing in the glow of the fire.

“A pretty face is a pretty face, but this,” Mick hefted his drink, “and this,” he patted his axe that remained at his side, “are what stir my passions. And a good confection!” He swiped another piece of cake from the table behind him. “Nate and Ray have their fun where they can, and good on them for it. Obviously, you want the same. So why aren’t you going over _there_.” He gestured with a slosh of his mug toward Barry—who was still dancing with the handsome human.

“I… wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Are all priests virgins?”

“ _No_ ,” Len was quick to reply. “Some choose to be celibate. Most don’t. The Sun God encourages pleasure within reason, as long as its shared.”

“You can’t wank?”

Len was glad the noises around them meant their conversation stayed between them. “We’re not supposed to. Never stopped me though.”

“You have girl priests, don’t you? What if they get pregnant? Never saw anyone in your robes carrying a babe.”

“There are spells to prevent that, but if it happens, they can choose to leave the order or turn their child over to become the next generation of priest.”

“Not something you have to worry about, so why not let him do the beginning.”

Len thought he had been. “He’s dancing with someone else.”

“He is. But he keeps looking at _you_.”

When Len finally let his attention shift back to Barry, he was passing the man he’d been dancing with to another partner—and motioned for Len to fill the space.

“It’s a celebration!” Mick reminded him. “But it’s obvious who he really wants.”

What an untested fool Len was for jumping to conclusions.

He stood, legs hesitant, which kept him from moving right away, but Mick gave him a helpful shove.

When Len reached Barry, he tried to say, “I don’t actually know how—” but Barry touched a finger to his lips, and then took his hands.

“Trying too hard takes all the fun out of it anyway. Just move. I’ll make sure we don’t fall.”

There was a boisterous and roaring beat, everyone cheering, stomping, and spinning with impressive control given the state of most of them. Barry kept hold of Len and urged him to move as he did, which Len wasn’t completely hopeless at, and Barry was soon twirling him and getting Len to twirl him right back.

Once Len was successfully mirroring the correct footing, Barry swooped in to loop an arm around Len’s waist and stretched out the other to take his hand. They bent and galloped and spun until all of Len’s breath was gone, so exhausted that they tripped over each other’s feet, laughing as they fell against each other.

Still, they didn’t topple, because Barry kept Len steady.

“Your clumsy feet again?”

“Maybe clumsy on purpose.”

They were as close as they’d been when Len fell upon Barry, though standing didn’t give them the same excuse for shared breath. Len had to wonder if the clumsiness in the barn had been on purpose too.

Before he could lose his nerve and pull away, the song changed from a lively one to a ballad, and Barry didn’t let him escape. Len found himself encircled by the strong, well-muscled arms he’d admired, and as he slid shaking hands around Barry’s waist in turn, he felt the powerful strength in his back as well.

Over Barry’s shoulder, Len saw Ray and Nate still tipsy and flirting, Ray having settled on a woman now and Nate a man, while Mick, alone with food and drink, raised a glass at him.

Len buried his head in Barry’s shoulder, nuzzling into the warmth of feeling the whole of someone’s body against his.

“Are you all right?” Barry asked.

Len must be clinging too hard, but when he tried to loosen his hold, Barry simply tightened his. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Danced with a stranger? Attended a festival? Held someone close?”

“Any of it. I’ve led a lonely life.”

Barry lifted Len from his shoulder and touched a palm to his cheek. “You don’t have to be lonely here.”

The light from the bonfires made the pendant beneath Barry’s shirt almost seem to glow. Len’s cheeks were flush, yet Barry’s breath was refreshingly cool against his skin as their lips neared.

A scream cut through the music, and Len tensed like that night in the tavern.

The music stopped with a stutter and everyone hushed, the revelers all looking for the source, but it didn’t seem to be among them. Slowly, heads began to turn in one direction.

Through the crowd, the girl who had screamed could be seen outside the square, standing before the protective circle—where one of the blue lights had gone out.

A monstrous shadow snatched her into the darkness.

More screams erupted as everyone scattered, a few brave souls running for the broken part of the circle, Len thought to try to save her, but they cast quick spells to light the post up again, closing the circle and leaving her to her fate.

“They’re here! They’re already here!”

Len spun toward the voice, his hands still clutching Barry’s back. People were retreating from where they’d tried to run, fanning out away from specific townsfolk.

Who _weren’t_ townsfolk but monsters lying in wait, writhing and changing beneath the light of the full moon.

“Wolves!” Barry cried.

There was too little time to breathe, yet alone think, as Barry pulled Len from the square to find a place of refuge. There wasn’t only one werewolf, but many, so many, all shifting form and then launching upon the villagers who had only been celebrating and trying to feel normal.

A flash of the trials Len usually didn’t remember flitted through his mind like the memory of a dream—the temple being savaged by cultists of the Dark Goddess, and all he could do was flee.

“Wait! We have to help!” He pulled back on Barry’s insistent tugging toward freedom. He couldn’t see anything clearly or recognize any faces. Where were the others?

“All you have is a dagger, and my magic isn’t offensive!” Barry yanked him onward.

“But _my_ magic can be! I have to help!”

“ _Please_. Not when there are so many!”

Len had lost track of everyone who had proven to be beasts in disguise, but there seemed to be dozens, and they were falling upon anyone who tried to run.

Len didn’t want to see those people torn apart…

“Please,” Barry tried again, pointing to the building he’d been leading them toward. It was the tallest in the village, a watchtower of sorts, or maybe a converted church. “We can still help if we get to a higher vantage point!”

This time, when Barry dragged him forward, Len didn’t resist. He wasn’t sure if he thought the suggestion sound, of if he was simply relieved to have an out that let him escape without feeling like a coward.

If the building had been a church once, there was no sign of that now. It seemed to be for storage but was also a mess of tables and scraps from preparing for the festival.

Barry led them upstairs past multiple floors. The screams from outside were unnervingly audible as they climbed.

“How did this happen?” Len asked.

“The circle never breaks. Someone must have snuffed it out, and no one noticed in the bustle of the festival.”

“Why? Why would someone do that?”

“For the lord’s favor,” Barry said simply. “Someone must think he wants this.”

Len was horrified at the thought, so much so that he might have lost everything in his stomach if not for the rush of cool air when they reached the top of the tower. It indeed gave them a better vantage point, and below them was insanity, with the hulking werewolves breaking into buildings to hunt people down.

Len wouldn’t have been able to describe them before, but now he saw how they were men made wolves, more like wolves made to stand on two legs but broader and with dexterous hands instead of paws. What remained of their clothing was stretched but mostly intact.

He honestly couldn’t tell if they were killing people, eating people, or merely terrorizing them while looking for something.

Or someone.

“Because I’m a priest of the Sun God… Ray said it loudly. John heard him, maybe others. I didn’t mean for him to say it!”

“It’s not your fault.” Barry squeezed Len’s hand still tight within his grasp. “But if it is you they seek, be careful what you cast. Anything too bright will draw them to us.”

“If only I had my bow…” Len thought aloud.

Then he spotted on open area, the same area near where the girl had been snatched into the dark. There was the least concentration of people there now and plenty of room for a trap.

“ _Ensnare_.” Len raised his free hand, which glowed dimly, but the main light erupted on the ground where he set his eyes, painting intricate sigils on the ground that quickly vanished, leaving no trace of a trap.

“Is that a priest’s spell?”

“Not exactly, but a useful one. Since I call on it with prayer, it can only ensnare someone or something that means another harm. If we can lure the wolves over that spot, they won’t be able to move. We just need to get a message to my friends. Where did they go…?”

Len had yet to spot any of them and worried over what that meant. They were likely fighting off the wolves somewhere indoors—fighting, _helping_.

Whereas Len had run.

“Come on.” Barry tugged his hand again, pulling him back toward the stairs. “We’ll look elsewhere, but we must be careful.”

They only made it down to the next landing, before they heard the crash of the door downstairs being burst open, and then growls.

Detouring onto the next floor, Barry pulled Len into a nook beneath the stairs. They sat huddled together, hiding, but it only made Len feel more like a coward.

“I could blind it,” he whispered, “or—”

“Shh!” Barry covered his mouth and mimed for him to listen.

There were more growls now, a lot more, and they were coming up the stairs. Even if Len could blind them or if either of them could think of another spell that might help, there were too many.

Barry dropped his hand from Len’s mouth to coil their fingers back together. The wolves went straight up to the tower, shuffled around in search, and then went back down—all but one, who exited onto their floor.

Len could hear its nails on the wooden floor. He’d swear he could _smell_ it, musky and earthy.

Slowly, he reached for his dagger. He could handle one werewolf, couldn’t he?

But Barry shook his head—right before a clawed foot crunched into the wood in front of them. Len held his breath, hearing his own heartbeat in his temples.

But the wolf turned away and hurried after its fellows.

They breathed in collective relief, keeping their hands clasped.

“Only silver to the heart can kill them,” Barry said, still whispering, though it seemed the wolves had gone, “and your dagger isn’t silver.”

“What manner of monster is this lord that he controls such beasts?”

“A broken one,” Barry said, almost pitying, “driven only by the desire to see his love again.”

“So I heard. That isn’t an excuse. The children…”

“I am sure they are safe, all in bed before now. Werewolves may be beasts, but they are also men. They have no reason to attack children.”

“Even so, we must find my friends. We have to stop this before anyone else gets hurt.”

They clamored out from under the stairs and continued to the first floor, listening carefully for other wolves. There were none, but the door was half off its hinges when they reached it.

Peering outside revealed no one immediately nearby, so they hurried to the next building and escaped inside. Len remembered this place. It’s where he and Barry had been helping with the food, the general store, with many of its shelving pushed against walls to give room for the preparations. No one appeared to be here either.

“He’s not completely heartless, just single-minded,” Barry said quietly, as they snuck up to the second floor, where the owner lived. “They say he found a way to smuggle out the remains of his love in hopes he could be reborn outside the barrier and return someday.”

“He discovered a way to bring his love back?”

“Yes, but all he had was his head, and a magical crystal he forged to call back his soul. He couldn’t return the soul to the body, however, not without some part of the other remains.”

Len stopped at the top of the stairs, the apartment also seeming empty, as what that meant struck him. “He’s sending out his horde looking for the remains. Maybe that’s what can finally kill him.”

“What do you mean?”

“John said he never stays dead, because to truly kill him, his slayer needs a part of what first cursed him. What more than his love?”

“Love is an awful thing to be a curse,” Barry said with a cringe, “but people do any number of things in the name of it. Even terrible things.” There was remorse in his eyes, but also yearning—yearning that Len felt too, to know a love that powerful.

There was a candle lit upstairs, flickering shadows across Barry’s face. “How… how do you think you know the difference between love and lust?” Len asked.

“I suppose…” Barry smiled in the candlelight. “You try and see for yourself.”

The darkness, the hush of their voices, the anxious feeling in Len’s chest, all made him want to grab Barry and hold him tight, but now wasn’t the time.

“We need to hurry,” he said, turning from the intensity in Barry’s eyes to head downstairs. They had to keep moving, seek out friendly faces over angry maws, and find a way to lead the wolves into that trap.

But, as they reached the door, Barry grabbed Len’s wrist to stop him. “Wait. If your friends have fallen—”

“They haven’t. You’ll see—”

“I believe you. I want to believe you. But when we can’t know what the rest of tonight might bring, I won’t waste another moment not doing this.”

“Doing—” Len’s words were stolen by a hand at the back of his neck and another in his robes, pulling him into the kiss they kept being denied.

It was the strangest sensation to meet lips that Len would swear he’d tasted a hundred times, yet this was the first—his true first kiss.

He held Barry like he’d never been allowed to hold his angel, wholly and solidly against him, and tilted his head to push the connection deeper. Barry _was_ his angel, prophesized and sent to him by the Sun God himself. Len was riveted by the heat and softness of him, so full of emotion that he might have choked if he wasn’t starved for anything real.

Even if disaster waited outside that door, for now, Len got to have _this_ , and the press of Barry’s lips and tentative slide of their tongues felt better than anything Len ever could have dreamed.

“Apologies, my lord.”

Len tore from the kiss, whirling to face this new threat and protect Barry behind him.

Two werewolves had entered, one speaking in a growly but discernible voice, as he bowed. “We know you said not to disturb you no matter what, but the adventurers are proving too much for us.”

Adventurers?

The _others_?

But why would these beasts call either of them lord?

Slowly, Len turned to look at Barry, and what he found was fury in the green—brown, _red_ —eyes, with the face he had found so beautiful twisting into a half-mad snarl that betrayed fangs.

Bartholomew flashed from Len’s side as though he’d disappeared and reappeared across the room, grabbing the neck of the werewolf who’d spoken and sinking his fangs into the flesh beneath its fur. He drank, holding the wolf like a child held a doll, so much power in his grip and bite, that even a werewolf twice his size was helpless.

The devouring of the wolf’s blood was so viciously executed that the wound gaped, the wolf’s neck soon falling unnaturally to the side as if half-severed. The sight was too shocking for Len to feel any rise of bile. All he could do was stare with an awful numbness overtaking him as he saw now that this was no angel.

The second werewolf dropped to its knees in supplication, clearly hoping for mercy that he knew he would not get if he fled.

Bartholomew finished draining the wolf who had angered him, dropping him like the lifeless doll he’d become and licking blood from his lips and stained fingers.

“Forgive me, my love.” Bartholomew turned his red eyes to Len. “But I did warn them. No. Matter. _What_.”

TBC...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it wasn't exactly a surprise, but it sure was for Len. ^_^
> 
> Fans of the series I wrote with sugarybowl, specifically the original In the Wrong Kind of Light, might have noticed the homage to chapter 2 of that fic with this ending reveal. Super subtle, but I just love that moment of discovering that who you're with isn't who you thought until right after a kiss. 
> 
> More soon!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every chapter is such a production! But I'm loving it, and I hope you are too.
> 
> Let's meet our vampire lord, shall we?

Len wasn’t sure what was more horrifying—Bartholomew’s eyes, his fangs, his face smeared with blood, or the body bleeding out what little remained in it, until it shifted from the form of a wolf to a limp, _dead_ man.

A young man.

The same young man who made Len jealous by dancing with Barry.

Len wanted to run. To be sick. To _scream_.

But what left him was a desperate prayer.

“ _S-S-Sun_ —”

His hand that started to rise was caught; his words crushed by a second grip on his throat.

“Hush now. No need for that.” Bartholomew’s grip slackened, and Len gasped for the breath that had been choked from him. The beautiful vampire had blinked in front of Len so quickly, no eye could have caught him. “I do not wish to hurt you, my love. I would never hurt you. Forgive my harshness.” Bartholomew gently petted Len’s neck, his hand unwinding and thumb dragging down the jugular. “But don’t do that again.”

Len’s face felt hot, his vision blurring as tears formed to streak unbidden down his cheeks. He started to shake and couldn’t seem to stop. “P-please…”

Why had Len left Central City? Why had he so foolishly believed he could be an adventurer?

Why did the monster have to be Barry?

“Retreat,” Bartholomew commanded the remaining werewolf without moving his eyes from Len’s. “Take the body and give my condolences to the family. I will punish no one else for your insolence, but the adventurers are not to learn the truth. Now, go.”

“Yes, my lord.” The werewolf bowed its head, its voice strangely familiar. Then it rose from how it had been kneeling, and before reaching to pick up the broken body from the floor, it transformed back into the dark elf it truly was.

_John._

He scooped up the dead young man with ease and exited without passing Len a sparing glance.

Len couldn’t breathe. Bartholomew wasn’t choking him anymore, but he couldn’t _breathe_.

“Peace, my Leonard.” Bartholomew pulled Len closer, so close that Len could smell the tang of blood on his skin. “Was it not a nice dream I gave you? Like the ones we used to share?”

The glowing red of Bartholomew’s eyes dimmed, returning to emerald green, and his fangs retracted, leaving only the scarlet smeared across his pale face—his beautiful face.

Like Barry.

Like Len’s angel.

“ _No_.” Len lurched backward, and though he feared a vice grip would stop him, Bartholomew let him go with outstretched hands left empty. “You’re not the man from my dreams. You can’t be. You read it from my mind! To trick me! To torture me…”

“Never,” Bartholomew countered, face pinching and eyes mournful. “I only meant to know you. _This_ you. Don’t you understand? You are my Leonard. You are my lost love returned to me at last.”

Len’s angel had called him that in the dreams, but no— _no_ —this was wrong.

It was all wrong!

“What do you want from me?” Len demanded, even as the tears kept spilling, and he was still shaking.

“All I want is to be with you, always.” Bartholomew wiped the blood from his face, but while he looked like Barry, Len could see the stain of red on his shirtsleeve like a brand.

“Then why lie?” Len backpedaled another step. “Why have those… things attack the village? That little girl…”

“She is fine,” Bartholomew insisted. “All illusion. Everyone is fine. No one has been hurt, I swear to you.”

“Except the man you killed.”

Bartholomew froze where he had begun to press forward, his face showing a flicker of the coldness he’d displayed a moment ago. “He disobeyed. A lord must keep order.”

“And what of the bodies between here and the barrier?” Len kept moving backward, until he hit the wall beside the staircase. “What of the people of Central City who your horde lays to waste? And all for what? To find me? It was all because of me…”

“Sacrifices had to be made.” Bartholomew continued his advance on Len, maintaining the visage of beautiful Barry, however unlike him he had proven to be. “Others refused to remain loyal, and my horde is often hungry. You don’t understand, but you will—”

“No!” Len shouted with what little resolve he had left. “S-stay away from me.”

Michael. All Len could think about was Michael.

Yet still, Bartholomew beseeched him.

“I wanted to know you. I wanted you to know me, as I once was.”

“And the wolves? This… charade?”

“I thought if your fellows were weak, then they deserved to perish here, but they are more than they seem, as you said. Go with them.” Bartholomew gestured back at the door. “Continue your quest. Come to my castle. Let them think you have a chance to succeed. Then, when you choose me of your own volition, if you wish them spared, I will grant you that.”

As Bartholomew reached for him, Len flattened himself to the wall. “D-don’t touch me. You’re a monster.”

The sorrow that filled Bartholomew’s eyes, his green human eyes, almost might have swayed Len. “You don’t understand, because you don’t remember everything yet, but you will.” Bartholomew grasped the cord of his pendant and pulled it from beneath his shirt. It was a brilliant ruby-red crystal, only the size of a thumb but shimmering with power. “With this, I can make you remember.”

_A crystal to call back his love’s soul…_

“To replace me…” Len stared at the gem in horror.

“Your soul is already in you, my love. Fear not. It is not a body I wanted returned to me, to then change how you were reborn. I want you—all of you. This crystal can simply call back the parts of you that you’ve forgotten. When the time is right.”

Fearful as Len had been of the crystal, watching Bartholomew tuck it back beneath his shirt made him curious to know what secrets it contained and if it could truly make any of this less terrifying.

“First, I will prove myself to you, but you _will_ choose me.”

Swift but not preternaturally so, Bartholomew descended upon Len to cup his cheek. He drew Len forward, and his lips pressing to Len’s made the taste of bile at the back of Len’s throat stronger than ever—because it was so sweet, so good, everything Len had ever wanted, now ruined.

He only kissed back because he wanted to remember Barry, to hang on to the lie that for a brief span of time he had something just for him that wasn’t tarnished by how he’d been born.

He’d never known how cursed his birth truly was.

Within the kiss, Bartholomew pulled the lily from Len’s sash, and when they parted, he lifted it between them. Len didn’t realize he was still crying until Bartholomew wiped the tears away. He thought Bartholomew meant for him to take the flower, but Bartholomew pressed it to the left breast of Len’s robes, and it vanished with a glimmer, reappearing as stitching in the shape of a lily like moon-touched embroidery.

“They’re running!” a voice sounded outside—Ray’s voice, rushing past the building.

“The villagers are only doing what I asked of them,” Bartholomew said. “Go to your friends. Play along.”

“I can’t. I _won’t_. I must tell them the truth—”

“Do you want them to know? About all this?” Bartholomew gestured between them. “About who you really are? Then tell them. But I ask you, please, give me the chance to win your favor. I will come to you again, so keep coming for me, keep heading toward my castle. In time, I will show you everything we lost.”

The touch of his hand, cool once more on Len’s cheek, made Len close his eyes, longing for it to just be Barry. When the touch withdrew, and Len opened his eyes, Bartholomew was gone. The only thing that remained was the pool of blood on the floor and the lily stitched into Len’s robes.

Len sprinted for the door, feeling what it must be like to be in a nightmare for the first time, because every shadow he passed, he expected to reach out and snatch him.

Mick and Nate had just rushed past when he exited onto the street, Ray far ahead of them now, all rushing for the edge of the protective circle, where a dozen or so werewolves were retreating, some limping and holding wounds.

Len followed the others, who had yet to notice him, just as the wolves passed over the trap he’d laid from the roof. The intricate designs glowed like they had when Len first cast the spell, causing the wolves to lurch as they were halted, their feet stuck to the ground as if shackled in place.

“Well done, Len!” Ray said as he spun around and spotted him. “It was you, wasn’t it? Nate’s entrapments look different. Smart thinking.”

“I—”

“So that’s what you were up to.” Mick reached back from where he had halted to smack Len’s shoulder. “Knew you were a worthy addition.”

Len _had_ set the trap, but…

But…

“Is that all of them?” Nate asked, focused on the werewolves, as he swirled a ball of fire between his palms that kept growing, which he clearly intended to throw. 

“Wait!” Len rushed past Mick to stop Nate, calling similarly to Ray, who had started to advance on the wolves with sword raised. “Don’t, please. They’re not mindless like ghouls. They can think, reason.”

The villagers were starting to gather, coming out from where they had been hiding, now that the danger was passed.

But then, there never had been any danger, not for anyone besides the werewolf Bartholomew killed.

Len’s friends looked to him curiously. It wasn’t an adventurer’s prerogative to be merciful to monsters. Len could see the concerned looks on the villagers’ faces too, likely in fear for how Bartholomew might punish them if Len gave the game away.

“They… they were retreating,” Len rushed on to explain. “Can’t we force them to return human? Imprison them maybe?”

“They’re werewolves!” Mick swung his axe up to grip it tight in both hands. It was a wonder he hadn’t killed some already and that they only appeared maimed.

“Mercy is virtuous,” Ray offered, lowering his sword in contrast.

Nate snuffed out his fireball with a huff. “And werewolves do have more sense and independence than other creatures ruled by a vampire lord. What say you, John?”

Len’s stomach dropped, as he turned to see John coming out of the crowd. He had managed to remain unbloodied from the body he’d carried, wherever it had ended up.

“They were hiding amongst us,” John said, the adage of a wolf in sheep’s clothing never before having resonated with Len more clearly, “maybe only a few, who then let the others in, but they did so believing they were doing our lord’s bidding. Perhaps they deserve mercy.”

“But why attack at all?” Ray asked, eyeing the wolves in suspicion. “I thought we were a good omen.”

“Because of me,” Len said, and though he was tempted to reveal the whole truth then, when all eyes turned to him, he found he couldn’t. “I’m… a priest of the Sun God, and such a thing is an afront to Lord Bartholomew in the eyes of his horde.”

“And I proclaimed you as such like a fool.” Ray sagged.

The brightly lit trap flickered and started to crack.

“They’re escaping!” Mick cried.

One of the wolves must be a wizard or have some sort of charm breaker.

Ray swung his sword up in defense, while Mick rushed forward, but not even Nate with a fresh swirl of fire was fast enough to act before the wolves were free and fleeing into the darkness.

“We can’t!” Ray stopped Mick when he tried to barrel past him. “They might rally, and we have no idea what’s out there. We have to regroup first.”

Mick growled and threw his axe to the ground. 

“I am sorry, friend.” Ray squeezed his arm before letting go, and then looked with equal apology to Len. “This was all my fault.”

It wasn’t, but all Len could say was, “You didn’t know.”

Only when Len was certain that none of his friends were watching did he glance at John, unsure how to regard the man, who might be one of many other wolves still here. Was his wife also? His children? Len could see them standing off to the side, but he had no way of knowing. All he knew was that the solemn, thankful nod John offered him made him feel sick.

Len had spent all day with the very monster they were out to kill, a monster with far more power than they were prepared to handle.

And he wanted Len. Len was the lost love from the story, equally the key to Bartholomew’s revenge or his undoing in some impossible way that Len didn’t understand. How could he fight something like that, how could he outwit destiny, when he couldn’t even speak the truth to his friends?

As the villagers began to disperse and return to their homes, everything stilled as if nothing had occurred, least of all a festival. Len couldn’t imagine staying in the village that night, but thankfully, his friends agreed it wouldn’t be safe.

“Take these extra protection rods.” John handed Nate a bundle bound in a simple sack. “They need to be a meter or less apart to work, but this should be enough to protect whatever camp you make.” 

“Thank you. We would stay, but…”

“You need to put the safety of yourself and your fellows first. I understand.” John’s dark eyes shifted once more, briefly, to Len’s.

Len and his party didn’t need protection rods. Whatever happened to them would be the will of Lord Bartholomew.

It was like being in a daze, gathering their remaining things from the room in the tavern and heading into the dark. Before the village became nothing more than a distant glow behind them, Len felt eyes on him, many eyes, from the windows of the buildings, and then later, from the trees.

Maybe they were all monsters here.

“What’s that?”

“Hm?” Len looked up with a start.

They had decided to go as far as they could from the village before setting up camp—for the villagers’ sake, who Len’s friends had no idea were behind the attack.

Ray gestured to the silver lily on Len’s robes.

“Um…”

“They call that a Stargazer Lily,” Nate said with barely a glance.

“Show off,” Mick scoffed.

“He doesn’t actually know everything about everything,” Ray said to Len.

“I know stitch work like that can’t be whipped up with the wave of a hand—other than with magic.”

 _Beautiful magic_ , Len had to admit, just like Barry’s colorful light show. “It was a… gift.”

“From your boy?” Mick asked.

They were keeping their voices low as they strode, ever vigilantly, through the wood. Mick’s voice would have been the loudest, if his gruff drawl wasn’t so deep.

“I didn’t see him there at the end. You get a little fun with him at least?”

“A kiss or two,” Len said, for that much wasn’t a lie. 

“When we kill this lord—”

“ _Save_ ,” Ray interjected. 

“—and work our way back to the barrier,” Mick ignored him, “maybe it can be more.”

“Oh, I don’t know—”

“Shh!” Nate held up a hand, stopping at the parting of trees into a clearing. “Do the rest of you hear… growling?”

As quietly as they could, they steadied their already drawn weapons and strained to listen. The woods were dark, but rather than risk a torch, each of them was relying only on their ability to see in low light, which was easy, since none of them were fully human.

The clearing ahead was small, but the continued wood beyond was dense and black as pitch, making the glow of ravenous animal eyes that much brighter.

Ray pushed in front of Nate and held out his shield. “Are they coming for revenge?”

“Let’s hope so.” Mick brightened.

But as they inched their way into the clearing, their attackers became clear.

 _Normal_ wolves, which would have been a relief if there wasn’t a pack.

“C-can werewolves take that form too?” Len asked.

“I don’t know,” Nate said, “but being mauled by them wouldn’t feel nice either way.”

One of the wolves leapt, and Ray met it first with a thrust of his shield. The rest of the pack took that as their cue.

“ _Shield_!” Len cast with a quick prayer, staying close to Nate to encompass them both.

Ray’s physical shield was keeping him protected, but he could barely risk any swings with his sword, and Mick’s axe was too slow to catch the nimble wolves as they darted out of range and then back at him with a snap of fangs at his heels. He couldn’t risk alchemy bottles either or he might set the whole clearing ablaze.

“More light!” Nate cried, paging through his books, hardly paying any mind to the wolves that had slipped past the others and were starting to surround him and Len.

The shield would only last so long.

“ _L-Light_!” Len cast upon Nate’s bag, filling the clearing with sudden brightness, which did nothing to dull the terror of the attack. If the wolves were people in disguise, then they were filled with vigor and hatred.

A pair crashed into Len’s shield with such force, the air around Len and Nate rippled from the impact. Len tried to aim his crossbow, but he couldn’t stop imagining the wolves lying dead at his feet only to transform back into humans.

Or dark elves.

Or darklings.

“I swear there’s a Mass Charm Animal spell in here somewhere,” Nate muttered.

“Nate!” Mick howled at him, but even that momentary distraction cost Mick dearly, for one of the wolves latched onto his arm, sinking its fangs in deep.

Len had to shoot. He had to. The wolves around his shield kept throwing themselves at it and causing it to flicker, and the one attached to Mick wasn’t letting go.

He steadied his aim…

A shadow hurled itself into the fray like a projectile catapulted into the side of the wolf attached to Mick, wrenching it from its hold on him. The other wolves scattered, focusing on the new threat. 

It was another wolf, huge with fur so black, it appeared like a phantom, raging through its brethren like a beast possessed. With all the other wolves turning to attack it in defense of their packmate, Mick and Ray backed up to return to Len and Nate. Mick was struggling to hang onto his axe after receiving such deep puncture wounds.

The new wolf was outnumbered, but it didn’t waver in its attack, and after wounding the first wolf, it bared its teeth, daring the others to be next. They faltered, as nervous and unsure as Len felt watching them.

Then the wounded wolf whined and slinked off into the trees, and the others retreated with it.

“So…” Nate began, as the black wolf turned to face them, “Charm Animal? Or Fireball?”

Len and the others tensed, ready for another fight—only for the wolf to sit, happy as it pleased, tail wagging and tongue lolling, like a tame puppy.

“Can it be?” Ray dropped his shield, and after a beat, inched forward, sheathed his sword, and reached for the wolf.

“Wait—” Len started, but the wolf sprang to its feet to meet Ray’s hand and _licked_ it.

“By the Sun God!” Ray dropped his shield into the grass to dig his fingers into the wolf’s thick fur. “My companion at last.”

Len’s shield flickered out completely, just in time for the danger to have passed.

“Neither spell it is,” Nate said. “Drat.”

Len snapped out of his stupor long enough to remember that Mick was _bleeding_. He returned his crossbow to his back and went to his friend to replace Mick’s meaty hand with his own. “ _Heal_ ,” he prayed, with one hand clasped around his amulet.

The light that had been cast upon Nate’s bag snuffed out, returning them to darkness, and making the black-furred wolf almost seem to disappear.

“What a guardian you are.” Ray continued to pet the friendly beast with all the adoration of a new parent. “That’s it! That’s what I’ll call you. _Guardian_. Do you like that?”

The wolf gave an affirming woof.

“What a beauty.” Ray knelt to run his hands even more thoroughly through the wolf’s black fur.

“Could have showed up sooner,” Mick grumbled, and then offered a thankful nod at Len when the fading light of the healing spell revealed only the faint grooves of scars and the remainders of blood.

The wolf was beautiful, like black velvet without a speck of other coloring, save its bright red eyes.

 _No_. No, they weren’t red. They couldn’t be. They were amber, _amber_ eyes, like a normal wolf.

Weren’t they?

“I think this is a sign to call it a night,” Nate said, already unpacking the protection rods and starting to space them out around the clearing.

“Isn’t he remarkable?” Ray continued to gush over his newly discovered pet.

Len had heard that dedicated rangers drew a companion to them, some believing it divine intervention that sent the very beast they needed to be by their side.

Ray certainly seemed to believe that’s what had happened. The others were merely grateful they’d been saved. Nate continued setting up camp, while Mick wiped the blood from his arm, and Ray played with his wolf, none seeming uneased or like they had noticed what Len thought he saw.

He had to have imagined the red eyes, but when they finally curled up to sleep, he thought he saw the wolf, settled amongst them beside Ray, turn its head toward him.

XXXXX

Len was so warm, so pleasantly encased in soft sheets and soft skin, that he didn’t want to rouse.

_“My beautiful Leonard, I will hold you like this forever if you wish it.”_

“Hey!”

Len gasped as he was jolted awake by the close bellow of Mick at his ear.

“About time. Been trying to wake you for ages. Having that nice of a dream?”

Len sat up, pleased to see that the blanket over him covered how painfully hard he was. “Um… actually, I might need a minute.” His cheeks would have burned if there was any blood left in his face.

Mick gave a low chuckle, keeping his voice quiet from the others, who were packing up camp. “Dreaming of your boy?”

Len didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t remember the dream, but he knew whose voice he’d heard.

“He up?” Nate called.

“He’s up.” Mick passed Len a secretive wink. “I’ll grab you some breakfast. Best we get moving as soon as you’re done.”

He meant with eating—or so Len hoped, because he certainly wasn’t going to attend to himself with everyone right there. Len just needed to take a few deep breaths and will his erection away.

The slow remembrance of everything that had happened last night helped.

Barry.

_Bartholomew._

Learning who Len truly was…

“Did you just give our best jerky to that mutt?” Mick drew Len’s attention across camp.

The wolf, Guardian, was indeed swallowing back a thick hunk of jerky. He acted more like a playful farm dog than the vicious defender he’d been last night, but Len couldn’t shake the memory of those amber eyes glowing red.

“He’s a wolf,” Ray defended. “He needs protein. Besides, he deserves a treat for saving our hides last night.”

“Wait.” Nate joined them. “You’re okay with him eating meat, but you won’t?”

“He’s a wolf!”

“Exactly. Why on earth would an animal companion who eats meat expect you not to?”

“Um…”

Mick busted out laughing, and Nate joined him. They wouldn’t be letting Ray live that down for a while.

Len wished he could do more than meekly smile.

Was it a wolf in sheep’s clothing—or a _vampire_ in the shape of a wolf?

“Ray!” Len called with sudden guilt cloying at his insides.

He had to tell them. He had to warn them. They couldn’t keep going on like this, on a doomed quest, where everything was set against them and they didn’t even know—including that Len might be their undoing instead of their quarry’s.

“What is it, brother?” Ray asked.

Before Len could answer, Guardian trotted over to him and nudged Len’s hand for a pet. If this had been any other beast, Len would have been charmed, but his hand shook as he stroked the wolf’s snout for fear of not doing what was expected of him.

“Please don’t hurt them,” Len whispered.

The wolf tilted its head, but its eyes didn’t change.

“Ah, you wanted some of Guardian’s attention for yourself. I was afraid you didn’t like him,” Ray said.

Len forced another meek smile. He couldn’t be sure of anything right now. He believed his friends would forgive him if he confessed and they learned of all he was keeping silent about.

But would Bartholomew?

“Nate?” Len asked, after he had eaten breakfast and was packing up his things. “Does the story of Lord Bartholomew say anything about his love? A name? Who he really was?”

“Clever of you to ask,” Nate said. “After all, we learned that the lost love might be the key to defeating Bartholomew, but I’m not sure what more there is of the story that can help us.

“The name of Bartholomew’s love has been lost, I’m afraid, but they say he was a thief, a vagabond that moved from town to town to avoid scornful looks from those who thought darklings unclean. One tale says that he met Bartholomew by stealing the lord’s purse. Bartholomew was dressed as a commoner to be among his people, so the thief didn’t know who he was stealing from, but Bartholomew was quick to realize and used a spell to call his purse back.”

“And he didn’t have the thief’s hands for that?” Mick queried.

“He was a good and merciful lord originally, remember? He believed that if their birthrights had been reversed, they might have turned out very much like each other. Is that what you wanted to know, Len?”

“Uh… yes, thank you. I was only curious.” 

Len had always had a penchant for stealing, though he’d tried to do so only for good reasons, like an apple for a hungry child. He supposed, however, that swiping Jorgen’s purse every morning had purely been for entertainment.

If what Nate had said was true, then Bartholomew was in disguise the first time they met, just like in this life.

But this wasn’t a fairytale. It was a tragedy. People were dying. How many had died at Bartholomew’s hand, beneath his fangs? How many had died at the brutality of his horde?

Like Michael.

“Might be a good idea to gather more firewood for tonight, while it’s still, um,” Nate gestured at the hazy sky, “day.” They had decided to not follow the main road or stop by anymore villages unless their rations ran short.

“I’ll go,” Len offered, eager for a moment alone.

“Not by yourself,” Mick said, but before he could offer to accompany Len, Guardian trotted over first.

“There you are. Guardian has you.” Ray beamed. “What a brilliant creature.”

Len wanted to scream, to sob, to lament his very existence, but all he could do was hurry into the woods with his unbidden companion following.

He rushed onward, faster and faster through the trees, knowing he couldn’t lose the wolf but still trying. Len could see as clearly in the darkness as any human could see in daylight. He barely had to open his eyes and was soon running, not wanting to stop until his lungs burned and he panted against a tree.

Then, as soon as he glanced behind him, the wolf was there, like it had barely had to rush to keep up.

“Stop!” Len bellowed. “I know it’s you… I won’t be fooled again! I can’t bear it!”

Guardian’s tail wagged, a wolf in the guise of a puppy.

Then someone whistled.

Instantly, Guardian hurried toward the source— _Bartholomew_ coming out of the trees.

He was Bartholomew now, not pretending to be Barry. As a lord, he was dressed in much finer clothing, with a high-collared red and gold doublet, a long black cloak, and his amulet, with its ruby crystal, prominently displayed on a gold chain.

Bartholomew offered Guardian several grateful pets, the wolf’s tail wagging madly. Just as dutifully, the wolf sat and stayed still in wait when Bartholomew left to approach Len.

“Guardian is a fine name for that one. It is true that I can see through his eyes, but he is a loyal creature, I assure you.”

“To you.” Len tried to back up, but the tree he’d been panting against was like a wall behind him.

“He will serve your friend as well. Come, shall we walk together?” Bartholomew stopped in front of Len, gesturing through the trees along a narrow path. “It is a lovely day.”

“Do you think this funny?” Len spat, tears springing to his eyes as was becoming far too common. It was a gloomy day, shrouded like any other in these cursed lands.

“Oh, my Leonard, please don’t cry. Can I not enjoy a stroll with my beloved? Or is it too strange when your friends are on their way to kill me?” Bartholomew made no further move to approach Len, but Len stood frozen, unable to flee.

“Ray doesn’t want to kill you. Nate either, not really. He is only interested in the story, the history.”

“Your burly friend wishes me dead.”

The words weren’t spoken like a threat, yet that was all Len could imagine them as, and so he whispered, like he had to the wolf, “Please don’t hurt them.”

The calm confidence upon Bartholomew wavered, and he spoke softer, “You kept our secret. I thought that meant you were willing to give me a chance to prove myself.”

“Perhaps my silence is only terror.” Pressing himself more firmly to the tree, when Len looked upon Bartholomew, all he could see were memories of a monster tearing out that werewolf’s throat.

“You need not fear me. Not you.” Bartholomew progressed slowly, and when he reached to touch Len’s shoulder, it was so gently that Len hesitated to shrink away.

 _Barry_ —that was who Len saw. “Could something save you?”

“I am saved right now. I’m with you.”

It felt like another dream, like a far-off distant dream that Len was only a few short breaths from remembering. “You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, even if I was your love in another life.”

“Do you think I was lying as Barry?” Bartholomew raised the hand on Len’s shoulder to touch his cheek, and whether simply because being touched felt so intimate for Len, or because Bartholomew’s skin was cool, the contact caused Len to shudder. “That is… _was_ me. Your gnome friend’s story is correct. When I was a young lord, I met my Leonard while pretending to be a peasant, because I wanted to know my people without them assuming what they knew of me.”

Against all Len’s better judgment, he wanted to sink against Bartholomew, but there was too much possibility that this was a trap, and so, he pulled away, forcing Bartholomew’s hand to drop as he escaped the tree and started to backpedal. “You sent those wolves after us, so that, when Guardian saved us, you could have a spy in our ranks.”

“I wish to know that you are safe, always.” Bartholomew followed him. “If your friends learn the truth about us, you might not be.”

“They would not think ill of me for something I cannot control. They have proven—”

“Are you certain of that?” Bartholomew’s advance forward was as steady as Len’s was back. “Lying about being a full priest is different than lying about being a consort to their enemy.”

“I’m _not_ —”

“You said they are good men. They seem so. But how well do you know them? So much better than me? For so much longer?”

“I…” Len stuttered in his steps. It was true that he had only known his friends for a day longer than Barry, but none of them were vampires.

“Please, my love, forgive me. I’ll admit that what I did in the village was selfish. I was trying to replay a nice memory of when we first met, and when it was interrupted, I… lost my temper.”

“Temper?” Len stopped completely, feeling his hands clench into fists of their own accord, for despite the fear he felt, those words filled him with fury. “You losing your temper cost a man his life!”

Bartholomew halted as well, and a flicker of his kind expression gave way to the cold beneath. “Would you have cared so much before about a werewolf dying?”

“I care about _anyone_ dying! Those people—”

“Are _my_ people, but your friends would have killed them outright if you hadn’t intervened.”

“And what of your horde?!” Len snapped back. He was so angry now—for the werewolf, for the villagers, for the people of Central City, but especially, for Michael. “I saw a child I knew killed from one of your attacks.”

“I am sorry you endured that,” Bartholomew said, calm and still as a statue, “but I swear that child did not die by the hands of my monsters. Never children. Never.”

“Ghouls are mindless—”

“Not completely. They are given a mission and rules to follow, and they do indeed follow them. _Never_ children.”

“But I saw—”

“Leonard,” Bartholomew closed the gap between them in one swift stride to cup Len’s cheek once more, “I swear to you, it was not so. Tell me, did you see a ghoul kill the child?”

“Well… no, but…”

“Were they a welcome child in your city?”

“No. He was a high elf in a city of humans. He lived on the streets.”

“And if he had been half? Or a darkling like you? Or a dark elf?”

Len knew the answer, but he had to remain strong, to resist. “You’re trying to trick me again. Everything about you is a lie.”

“I swear—"

“You swear that the dreams you send are not meant to tease me? To manipulate me?”

“To please you,” Bartholomew swore, and the soft caress of his palm made it so difficult to be repulsed by him.

Len clenched his eyes shut, forcing the lingering tears to streak down his cheeks and be caught by Bartholomew’s hand that he couldn’t help pressing his face against. “If I am your love, then tell me the truth. Tell me everything.”

“What do you wish to know?”

“How did this come to be? Nate’s story says you had your love’s… head, but the Prime Kingdom had the body. You needed both to bring him back, but you couldn’t leave your lands.”

“The church kept your bones like a trophy. I cannot leave this place, nor could any of my people until the barrier began to fall, but those who have come in from the outside can leave if I allow it.

“Many years after I lost you, I sent your skull back with a scout. He was enthralled with all my most powerful magic to tell the church that one day I would come for them, and the only thing capable of stopping me would be you. I gave them the instructions for how to bring you back, and left it to them, my one hope to see you again.”

Len thought of the gem around Bartholomew’s neck, holding the missing pieces of his soul, the memories of a past life. “You tricked them too. You lied.”

“It wasn’t a lie. You are the only thing that can defeat me, for I am helpless against you. You are my weakness. And my salvation. You asked if I could be saved. What more could I possibly need than to be with you, my love, forever?”

Forever…?

Within the hold Bartholomew had on Len’s face, he opened his eyes finally to look upon the beautiful visage of the man who, as Barry, had stolen his heart in a day. Len didn’t know Bartholomew, but were they really so different?

Slowly, Bartholomew ran his fingers from Len’s cheek up to the edge of his long, tied-back hair. “Your locks were cut short when we first met. Do you remember?”

“No,” Len admitted. Not outside his dreams.

“You will. There are ways I can rouse your memories, with aid from the soulstone, but slower, gentler.” Bartholomew tipped Len backward, and only then did Len realize that another tree was there to brace him. “Such sweet, wonderful ways. All you have to do is ask, and I can show you such pleasures.”

Bartholomew’s hands were cool and soft, as the one in Len’s hair ran pleasantly across his scalp and the other drifted lazily down the front of his robes.

“I-I don’t… know.”

“Let me show you,” Bartholomew urged. “Let me remind you of our love. Please… say yes.” His hands paused, neither doing more nor advancing, in wait for Len’s answer.

The others seemed so far away, out of sight and mind. Guardian wasn’t visible either, leaving Len and Bartholomew alone with the sweetest of promises that maybe, just maybe, could banish Len’s lingering doubts.

He had longed all his life, after all, for the Sun God or any hand of fate to give him someone who’d love him.

“Yes,” he said like a breath between them. “Show me.”

What had been the ghost of a touch in Len’s dreams was palpably different now. Bartholomew held Len’s head and bent to kiss him just as the southward trailing fingers slipped inside the parting of his robes. Bartholomew timed the descent of his lips with the curl of his fingers inside Len’s trousers and around his sex.

Len had only—literally only—ever dreamed that someone would want him this much, as Bartholomew seemed to.

Bartholomew stroked between Len’s legs, held him securely, and deepened the kiss with his tongue.

While Len’s hips arched into the intimate touch, his mouth opened wider to taste Bartholomew. He wasn’t Barry, but he was, stunning and devoted to Len in ways no one outside this place could ever be. Bartholomew had said that it wasn’t only because Len was his love reborn, but that he wanted to know Len too, as he was now. Maybe he meant that.

There was a simple tie that kept Len’s trousers together, and Bartholomew’s hand paused its stroking to undo it, causing the trousers to drop around Len’s ankles. Len let his knees fall open, leaning against the tree, as Bartholomew kissed him, and he felt himself harden and begin to leak into the hand pleasuring him.

His own touch had never felt so thrilling. The dreams over so many lonely years paled in comparison as well. Only now, at last, did Len truly have his angel.

“Relax, my love. I have so much more to offer you.”

Bartholomew’s hand withdrew, and Len whimpered for him to return, but then Bartholomew dropped, right onto his nobly dressed knees, and parted Len’s robes with both hands to descend this time between Len’s thighs.

Len bit back a sharp cry, for as cool as Bartholomew’s skin had proven to be, his mouth was warm, achingly so, and he swallowed Len until his nose pressed to the white tuft of Len’s hair.

It was maddening and so different from the stroke of a hand to feel heat and wetness and suction all at once, and then, the barest tease of teeth. The only place Len could find purchase was in Bartholomew’s locks, trimmed short but long enough to twist Len’s fingers into and hang on. He gasped to feel Bartholomew bobbing, coiling his tongue, and kneading Len’s hips as he held him in place. Len was limp and surrendered in every way possible when he finally— _finally_ —finished, and Bartholomew swallowed down his release with a contented hum.

“Now, my love, will you let me offer more?”

_There was more?_

“Anything,” Len said without thought.

Bartholomew smiled and rose back up to his feet. He took hold of Len’s head again, so tenderly, and bent first to kiss his lips, tinged with the tang of salt, then Len’s cheek, his jawline, and at long last, Len’s neck.

The prick that followed was an instant pain that just as quickly soothed into the most indescribable bliss.

“Oh…” Len sighed. How could anything be better than being devoured by a lover’s kiss, on his lips and between his legs, and yet somehow— _this_.

Len knew it was day and hazy darkness above him, yet he would swear he could see stars and smell the sweetest of aromas, as if he were in that tower they’d shared in Len’s dreams.

But they weren’t dreams. He remembered that room. He remembered that bed. He remembered the feeling of Bartholomew pressed tight to him just like this…

Those weren’t stars above him. They were red. They were Barry’s lights exploding in the sky like it was his tapestry.

Red light.

Glowing light.

The gem.

The soulstone.

_“Why would you dabble in such magicks? You know the cost that dealing in life and death can take upon the wielder.”_

_“We are at war, my love, and the king and those who think like him will not stop until they have stopped_ us _and wiped your kind, anyone not human, from this plane. I only want a contingency. If something were to ever happen to you, I don’t think I could survive it.”_

_“Of course you could, my sweet lord, noble ruler of my heart. You can survive anything. Promise you’ll wait for me, because I swear, nothing will ever stop me from getting back to you.”_

Len could almost see it, as well as hear those faded voices. He could remember the swell of remorse at the thought of leaving Bartholomew behind, even if only for a short time. He could remember the love he had for Bartholomew, overwhelmingly so.

He could remember the fear—of losing Bartholomew, and of what Bartholomew might do if he was wrong and never returned. 

The queerest taste flooded Len’s mouth, tearing him from the swirl of familiar flashes. He swallowed, savoring the sweet richness and how it coated his tongue. He had never tasted anything like it.

Because it was a vampire’s blood, coming from Bartholomew’s wrist as he fed it to him.

Len turned his head with a lurch and spat, the fugue of what he now realized was a vampire’s bite fading with the memories that had been coming back to him.

“What are you doing?!” Len pushed Bartholomew with all his might, but the figure before him was like granite. Len spat again, trying to get every bit of blood out of his mouth, but he knew he’d already swallowed some. He could feel it burning down his throat. The woods were spinning. “You’re trying to make me serve you!”

“No. I am trying to keep you with me for all time,” Bartholomew said softly. “I would never make you serve me.”

“I wouldn’t be able to help it.” Len spat again and looked into Bartholomew’s red glowing eyes with a glare. “I’d be a spawn, or a bride, entirely under your control. How is that different?”

Bartholomew licked at the blood on his own wrist, and the wound closed faster than any healing spell. His fangs still held a tinge of the blood he’d drank from Len as he said, “Because I will release you from my thrall to be my equal. Ask your friends. A vampire lord can release any spawn, any bride, if we so choose. That is all I have ever wanted—to have you at my side. We will rule these lands together and over all the Prime Kingdom too. You’ll see.”

Defiantly, Len wiped the remaining blood from his mouth. “Release me.”

Bartholomew drew back with a cringe, but Len said it again.

“Release me.”

“I have.”

“From this _nightmare_. Let me go home. Your magic can do that much, can’t it?”

The sorrow on Bartholomew’s face was distinct and seemed too much like pity. “If you return to the church, they will kill you. You will have failed them and why they brought you back. They only suffered your presence because they thought you a tool.

“If you wish it, I can release you and your friends from these lands right now, but you cannot go back to Central City. It was never your home. But if you stay, oh, my love, if you stay, what you experienced in that village can be our future. Good people. Welcoming people. And us amongst them. There are wolves there, yes. There are many creatures in Nightfall that you have yet to encounter, but predators do not have to be monsters.”

With a last lick of his lips, his fangs retracted, and his eyes returned to green. 

“Think on all I have said. But first, let me heal your wounds.”

“No.” Len pressed back against the tree when Bartholomew made to swoop forward. “I will heal them myself.”

After bending to hastily pull up his trousers, Len touched the spot on his neck where Bartholomew had been drinking. There was barely any wetness, for the blood had been licked away, but there were two distinct punctures.

It was always harder for Len to heal himself, because to heal anyone called upon part of one’s own energies. Still, cycling his own power through him healed the bite, leaving only the faintest of scars, like on Mick’s arm.

Len did up the collar of his robes to hide them.

“I have to get firewood, or they’ll wonder—”

A wave of Bartholomew’s hand at a smaller tree caused it to vanish, replaced by a pile of kindling. “And aren’t you quite good at it. Until next time, my love. You will say yes to me again.”

Len readied a snide remark, fully devoted to his anger, with the fear less looming, only for Bartholomew to step behind a tree and not reemerge.

With tentative steps, Len moved toward it and peered around its trunk. 

Nothing.

A lick at Len’s hand made him jump. He spun around, fumbling for his dagger, but the culprit was Guardian, who sat dutifully again, wagging his tail. Unsure as Len was of what was to come or how to proceed with his friends, he couldn’t help reaching out to pet the wolf.

XXXXX

When Len returned to camp, he didn’t dare let the others see how ravenous he was when they had only just eaten. The realization of how hungry he was terrified him, the thought of what he’d unwittingly allowed and what he might become if he allowed it again, so much so that he was too terrified to ask if a vampire lord could release his thralls.

Len wasn’t sure what answer would worry him more.

He should tell his friends. He should tell them everything. They deserved to know, but every time Len opened his mouth to begin, he’d think of the good, the sweet, the warm and wonderful that Bartholomew offered—like any good devil.

Nate whistled as he led them through the wood. He’d asked to be at the head to seek out magic that might be in their path, for what else could explain why they hadn’t encountered any of the vampire lord’s monsters.

Ray said that Nate didn’t realize when he whistled like that, but it was habitual if he wasn’t talking, as if he couldn’t bear the silence.

Guardian did seem to truly enjoy Ray’s presence, remaining by his side as the pair trailed behind Nate.

Mick was by Len. He kept scratching at his arm, and only when Len saw how red the skin was becoming did he realize how much the giant had been itching while they walked.

“Don’t do that,” Len said, stopping to grab Mick’s arm. “Animal bites are more likely to cause infection. That must be why it’s bothering you. Let me heal it again.”

An affirmative grunt responded, as Mick allowed the manhandling. Healing was the only time in Len’s past that he hadn’t hesitated when touching someone, but it was a rare comfort now to not have the person he was healing flinch.

Mick was tough, but he had also proven to be exceptionally kind.

He’d proven to be exceptionally brutal as well, relishing in violence and bloodshed. Surely, he would relish slaying Bartholomew.

Would he relish felling Len along with him?

“Mick… are you mad I stopped you from killing the werewolves?” Len asked, healing his friend slowly, for any potential infection but also for his own benefit, with a fainter glow emanating beneath his palm.

“Mad I didn’t get to kill any werewolves,” Mick said, “not mad at you for having a soft heart. Couldn’t travel with Ray if I minded that, now, could I?”

“I suppose not. Do you… enjoy killing?”

“Why not? As the Lady of Chaos teaches, some things need to die for others to live. Plus, it can be fun. A rush of fire like no other. Is it so wrong to enjoy that?”

Bartholomew didn’t think so. Maybe Len didn’t either.

But if Bartholomew was right about Len’s friends, what did that make Bartholomew?

“What would we do without you, eh?” Mick said as Len’s healing glow faded. The skin around his scars was no longer red and the scars themselves were fainter.

That was when Len realized how quiet the woods had become.

Nate’s whistling had stopped—because Nate and Ray were gone.

“Hey!” Mick called into the trees. “Where’d you bugger off to?”

When there was no response, Len and Mick hurried ahead, only to discover Nate, Ray, and Guardian not too far away, though halted in a slightly larger clearing than the one where they’d been ambushed by wolves.

“What—?” Len started, but Mick swinging his axe into a fighting position cut him off.

Guardian’s hackles were raised, and eyes glowed through the trees, though not like the wolves from last night. These eyes shimmered like people who could see in low light, and they weren’t only in front of them or to the sides of the cleaning, but when Len glanced back, they were behind them as well.

Tightly drawn bows came into view like a unified, enclosing snare made up of dark elves, a few scant humans, and a darkling woman. She was the only one not aiming a bow and stepped ahead of the enclosing trap.

“Welcome to my woods,” she said, her white hair braided on one side in intricate rows, her leather armor black like her fellows but more elaborate to mark her as leader, as she gave a confident, dangerous grin. “I’m Zari. And you are outnumbered.”

TBC...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More soon!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so long, but I was splitting my time with A LOT of other projects. My updating should be more consistent now. ^_^

“We’ll make this easy on you,” Zari continued. A mace and dagger were sheathed on her belt, though she hadn’t drawn them. Her fellows had that covered. “Who is your master?”

Her words were directed at all of them, but her eyes went first to Mick, as if seeing him and his axe as the greatest threat.

“I serve no one,” Mick growled. “The Lady of Chaos asks only for conviction, not worship.”

“You tout worship of the old gods?” Zari said, as some of the bows trained on Len and the others wavered.

“Old?” Nate repeated. “They are very much still worshipped where we come from, dear woman.”

“It has been a thousand years since anyone believed gods would save them here.” Zari grinned.

“They won’t be saving _you_.” Mick readied his axe, but Len rushed forward, recognizing how outnumbered they were.

“Don’t!” he cried, stepping out from the shadows.

Zari seemed to notice him for the first time, and her grin flickered. “A darkling. But those robes…”

Hastily, Len tried to hide his amulet, but Zari’s silvery eyes went right to it.

“Show me that. Now.”

Mick growled once more, and Guardian echoed him with a low rumble, but there were too many people, too many bows. Len didn’t want to see bloodshed he might have prevented.

Holding his hands out for his friends to stay back, Len took a cautious step closer to Zari. After putting his crossbow away, this time when he reached for his amulet, it was to hold it out.

“I am a priest of the Sun God, but I mean you no harm if you do not mean harm to me or my friends.”

The dozen or so people surrounding them dropped their weapons in an instant, not even waiting for Zari to tell them to stand down.

Len breathed relief. He imagined Ray and Nate did too, but he heard Mick grumble.

“That’s all it takes for you to see sense?” the half-giant groused. “Because he’s like you?”

“Because he serves the Lord of Law,” Zari corrected. “The darkling part merely surprised me, since I know most of my kin. But if you have someone with you who is an agent of the Sun God, you can’t possibly work for Bartholomew.”

The ease with which the troupe believed that, believed in Len, made his stomach drop.

“You _don’t_ serve Bartholomew?” Nate asked. “You openly admit opposing him?”

“What’s it matter?” Zari said, as those with her fell in step behind her rather than surround Len and the others. “Serving Bartholomew isn’t a guarantee of life, so I choose to be me. We all do.” She nodded at her fellows, and then returned to Len. “Go ahead. Cast _Bless_ on your amulet. The holy light would make any creature created by Bartholomew turn away and recoil. You’ll see that none of us do.”

“Created?” Len pressed. “He created more than vampires? The werewolves? Beasts?”

“He would make monsters of us all if his horde didn’t need to feed. Go on then.”

Len worried for Guardian, though the wolf was behind him between Ray and Mick. He almost worried for himself, given he had ingested Bartholomew’s blood, but when he summoned the simple prayer into his amulet and it lit up the clearing with holy power, while some of the dark elves and darklings squinted, no one turned their heads or backed away—including Len.

With a nod, Zari reached toward Len with an outstretched hand.

Guardian growled again, but Ray hushed him.

“It’s all right, boy. They’re friends.”

Ray’s words were all it took for Guardian to drop his defensiveness. Len was less certain. So far, everything here had been crafted by Bartholomew, set in motion by his will. These people could be the same.

So, although Len accepted Zari’s hand and gripped her forearm in friendship, as soon as she moved on to the others, he thought a silent prayer.

 _Detect_ —but not for magic. He sought to root out falsehoods and discover if she was a liar.

To the best of Len’s ability, no ill-intentions reflected back at him.

“Well then, friends,” Zari said once introductions had been made and all weapons put away, “you are headed in that direction, and so are we. Shall we travel together?”

Mick seemed appeased as soon as one of the dark elves passed him a water skin that must have contained alcohol.

Ray smiled from the start, offering up Guardian for pets and accolades.

Nate remained beside Zari, and Len stayed close to listen in.

“If you choose not to serve Bartholomew,” Nate began, “why are you heading toward his castle?”

“It’s a small fief,” Zari said. “You can travel the length of it in half a fortnight. Keeping moving still sometimes means you’re going the wrong direction. Besides, being by the barrier isn’t always best. And we have waystations. That’s where we’re headed now.”

“Keeping moving protects you from Bartholomew’s wrath?” Len queried.

“As best as anything else.”

If that were true, and it wasn’t merely Bartholomew’s whims that kept these people safe, then Len was putting them in danger simply by being near them.

But what would Bartholomew do if Len told the truth?

“Truly? You’re not only adversaries of Lord Bartholomew but here to slay him? Perhaps you even stand a chance.” Zari nodded at Len once more. “Do you know the story of the first darkling priest?”

Len startled, but Nate spoke the words on Len’s mind first.

“There have never been any darkling priests other than my friend here. Or have there?” Nate perked up. When he straightened, he matched Zari’s height, who was tall for a darkling woman. 

“It makes sense you wouldn’t have heard of her,” Zari said. “It’s a tale from our lands, and you’ve been closed off from this place for a thousand years. But yes, there have been darkling priests of the Sun God.”

“Why are there no priests of the Twilight God or Dark Goddess?” Len asked. He had often wondered, but to ask such a thing in the order risked reprimand for daring to think the _lesser_ gods deserved devotion.

“Your friend already implied it.” Zari motioned back at Mick, who was laughing now as he shared his homebrew with the dark elf who’d offered his own drink. “The Lady of Chaos does not ask for adoration, only example, conviction in her tenets.

“The Lord of Balance is similar. They teach their followers to pursue magic and knowledge. So, in a sense, they ask for scholars, for pursuers of that knowledge, not worship.

“In a way, your friends here _are_ priests of their deities.” Zari turned her smile to Nate, who seemed pleased with that assessment, even excited, like it was rare for him to discover someone with his same zeal and understanding of history.

“So, what of the darkling priest?” Nate asked.

“Lorna,” Zari said with reverence, continuing to lead them through what seemed a familiar path through the trees. “Even back then, before Bartholomew’s reign, she doubted the teachings of her fellow priests that the Twilight God was greedy for knowledge and kept their worshippers in limbo when they died, or that the Dark Goddess was evil and tortured her followers the same ways they wreaked havoc on others in life.

“She found the Twilight God first, for her pursuit of the truth was understood by followers of Balance and explained to her as worthy and good. She learned magic and history and incorporated it into her prayers for more powerful spells.

“When she returned to the order, she was chastised for this corruption. The High Priest asked her, ‘What do you believe of the afterlife now?’ And Lorna said, ‘It doesn’t matter. Maybe there is nothing. Maybe there is everything. But if we focus so much on that end and not the lives we live, are we truly doing good in the world?”

“The Wizards Academy teaches the same.” Nate nodded.

“But if your point, your purpose is to always pursue more,” Len asked, “to what end?”

“For the sake of it.” Nate shrugged. “For the sake of knowing. For the wonder, the adventure, the challenge! That in itself can be fulfilling.”

“I had a feeling you followed the Twilight God.” Zari indicated his books.

“And what of you, dear lady?” Nate turned his excitement back on her.

“I haven’t finished my story yet.” Zari smiled. “The High Priest called Lorna a blasphemer for believing both gods could be followed, and she was cast out. She might have been killed, but her abilities had grown too great, and she was able to escape. She fled right to followers of the Dark Goddess.

“As Lorna suspected, they proved to be different than what she had been taught too, believing simply that one should live without restraint and respect that others have a right to do the same, as long as one’s rights do not infringe upon another’s. With this knowledge, she found pleasure in her prayer, magic, and other pursuits that had been lacking. She learned that life can be lived for others but also should be lived for oneself, without fear of being called selfish or wrong.

“At long last, her travels brought her here, where she settled and passed on her beliefs to others, mostly dark elves and darklings like her.”

At this, Zari pulled out her own hidden amulet, deep onyx like her armor.

While the Sun God’s symbol was a silver sunburst, the Dark Goddess’s was a golden star outlined in a circle, like a bullseye or a compass, and the Twilight God’s was a bronze symbol of infinity. Overlapped as they were for Zari’s pendant, the center of the sun melded with the star and crossing of infinity, but its rays still shone, and each part of all three symbols was connected—unified.

Len had never seen them all together like that.

“I revel and rejoice and kill when I must,” Zari said. “I pursue my own betterment when I can, and sometimes justice is not kind, like the harsh light of day. Well, day somewhere.” She replaced the amulet and grinned once again. “I don’t know true sunlight.

“As for Lorna, she married and had a son, not giving up either for her beliefs, for she didn’t believe that was necessary or something any of the gods would ask. Her name and her teachings live on, though her son’s name has been forgotten—Lord Bartholomew’s lost love.”

Len nearly tripped over a fallen tree branch.

His mother?

No—Leonard’s mother.

Yet, if Len was resurrected rather than born, wasn’t she his mother too?

“That is one of our oldest and most cherished stories,” Zari went on. “For you to not know it outside of Nightfall, I’m surprised you even knew of Bartholomew to come here.”

“Most people don’t,” Nate said, taking one of the books from his belt. It was the black leather-bound tome, which he’d situated closer within reach, since he had been referencing it so often. “This book is the only surviving written account. It is believed the Order of Law passes it down orally but forbids it from being transcribed. They didn’t dare destroy the account, however, smuggled from these very lands.”

Zari gazed upon the book with the same veneration Nate did. “If that’s what I think it is, then it was written by Bartholomew’s own hand.”

“What?” Len nearly tripped again. “Then why isn’t his love named in it?”

“I heard that only the resurrected love could cause the tome to reveal the name. A sign from Bartholomew of his true identity, should the book be part of what brings him home.”

It wasn’t that Len doubted his lineage any longer, but so much had been a lie, he wondered what was true and found his eyes straying to the book.

“Fascinating.” Nate clung to the tome. “All of it—simply fascinating! I want to know everything.”

If the subject matter had been different, Len might have smiled at how Nate was clearly smitten with Zari and her knowledge that rivalled his own.

Len had been so entranced by the conversation, however, that he didn’t realize at first when the wood opened to a new clearing. This one wasn’t an empty patch of grass where one might setup camp but held an alter made of stone, though the pieces seemed to have been toppled.

Zari’s people set to work collecting those pieces. They didn’t appear upset that the alter had been disturbed, merely placed the stones in a specific order around and on top of each other, until they resembled the shape of Zari’s amulet.

“The horde often knocks them down,” Zari explained. “There are many similar shrines throughout Nightfall, spaced out so that we might reach one at least every other day and pray for continued protection. None of Bartholomew’s followers would dare remove one of the stones. They wouldn’t admit it, but they fear the gods’ power as much as they fear Bartholomew. After all, we believe all three gods worked to seal these lands.”

Len and the others were left standing, as Zari and each of her fellows knelt before the shrine in quiet prayer. Not even Mick with his usual boisterousness dared speak over the silence.

Zari was clearly a priest of their beliefs, for lack of a better term, but several others proved to have amulets like hers, for all began to glow, and then the stones began to glow too.

It was a strange sensation that washed through Len, not unlike calling on one of his own prayers, and yet, instead of feeling alone with the warmth the Sun God granted, he felt connected to everyone in the clearing and every blade of grass or tree around them.

After the light faded, little by little, the people rose, though some remained praying for longer. When Zari stood, Nate went to her.

“Why do you believe all three gods sealed this place?” he asked.

“Because if Bartholomew served one of them, he would let that one stand. Maybe tending to these shrines and praying isn’t what keeps our people safe. Maybe it is. All I know is that Bartholomew’s horde continues to destroy our alters and we continue to thrive. That must mean something.”

“But I…” Len started to speak, and now it wasn’t only Nate and Zari who looked at him, but Mick and Ray, present and curious as well. He still had to ask, “I thought the story said that Bartholomew turned to the Dark Goddess to become a vampire lord. And you said _he_ wrote it.”

“Does it say he turned to the Dark Goddess?” Zari asked, her smile remaining.

Nate dug into the tome to find the passage. “Here we are. See, he… oh. Well, I suppose what it actually says is, ‘Bartholomew turned to dark magic, holding the power of life and death, that many believed to be the foundation of the Dark Goddess.’”

“A common mistake,” Zari said. “It is not the gods who make something good or evil, but those who wield their power. Symbols of the gods cannot harm Bartholomew, and he and his horde certainly hold more hatred for the Sun God, given they cannot exist in sunlight, but it would seem they do not like the sight of any of the gods’ symbols.”

Len thought of his amulet, and how almost immediately, Barry had convinced him to tuck it away. Before they reached the barrier and entered Nightfall, Len had been in a dream with Bartholomew that caused him to leave his stole at camp. That had to have been purposeful.

“Is it only your small group, always alone out here?” Ray queried.

“There are other troupes like ours that we trade with, and exchange, well, whatever or whoever wants to be exchanged.”

“You don’t trade with the villages?” Mick asked.

“Never trust the villages.” Zari’s smile vanished. “They are all loyal to Bartholomew. Loyal enough to be dangerous.”

“Don’t you encounter more monsters out here?” Ray knelt to pet Guardian, who seemed more excitable than usual with so many people around.

“Better than being seduced and turned into something you’re not.”

Len reached to touch the collar of his robes. It was still secure, covering both his scar and his newly acquired bite marks.

“Villagers inside the barrier gave us these posts.” Mick showed one of the protection rods from his pack. “Are they useless?”

“They work,” Zari affirmed. “We have some of the same, but they’re not strong enough to keep out Bartholomew or his brides. For that, be glad you have your priest.”

Yet again, Len was startled and filled with a wave of guilt, because so much trust and belief was being placed in him, and he was practically a traitor.

He mustered a smile anyway, until all eyes were off him, and his own gaze landed on Guardian—who Bartholomew could use like a conduit, hearing and seeing everything.

Len must have gotten lost in thought, because the next thing he knew, his friends were no longer around him, and Zari’s troupe appeared to be packing up to continue away from the shrine.

“Len, was it?”

Shaking the fog from his mind, Len turned to Zari. She had wandered away too, but now she returned. “Yes?”

“You seem agitated.”

“I’m… not the adventurer my friends are. This is my first quest.”

“And you chose Bartholomew? You must be terrified.”

Len swallowed.

“That was meant to be a joke,” Zari amended. 

Len tried to smile but it was getting harder to fake the expression. “I wish it was.”

Stepping in closer to Len, Zari trapped him with her silvery eyes so like his own. They seemed to pierce right into his soul, reading his doubts. His fears.

His betrayal.

“I don’t think you need to worry.”

“Wh-what makes you say that?”

“There is power about you, Len. But it isn’t all coming from your amulet or priest abilities. Much comes from you, certainly, but there is something… older.”

Len held his breath, worried she truly could read his heart and mind and the depths of his soul. Could she see with her own abilities that he was Bartholomew’s love?

“What’s in that?”

“Huh?” Len realized Zari wasn’t looking at him so much as at his belt—at the small pouch on his belt, where he had scooped up a handful of the unknown powder from the temple’s secret storage. “Oh! I’m not really certain.”

Carefully, Len unhooked the pouch and opened it for Zari to inspect. 

“I took it from the order when I left. I sensed its power too, but I don’t know what it is. A spell component maybe?”

Just as Len had done when he first discovered the powder, Zari waved her hand with a whispered, “ _Detect_ ,” and like then, the powder gave off a faint glow.

With a tilt of her head, Zari reached inside to run her fingers through the soft substance, but when she pulled her hand back, she still seemed unsure of what it was.

“I don’t know either. Whatever it is, it’s practically singing with power. Keep it close, Len. You might need it. Come,” she said with a renewed smile, “the others are ready to move on. We’ll want to be far from here before we camp.”

“Um…” Len reached for her when she started to turn.

“Yes?”

No one else was around them, and Len didn’t know the next chance he’d have to ask this. “You are knowledgeable of these lands and the creatures here. Do you know… can a vampire lord release their thralls? Allow them to be equals instead of servants?”

“Certainly.”

Len hadn’t been sure what answer he’d wanted, but those words filled him with relief—

“But they never do.”

—for but a moment.

“Having that sort of power is too appealing,” Zari finished, “even if the vampire lord professes undying love. Shall we?”

It felt wrong to keep the truth from everyone, and yet, if it was up to Len to stop Bartholomew, maybe the burden should be his alone.

Then again, that meant there might come a time when Len would have to leave his friends for their own protection.

For now, as they continued their travels, Len tried not to think on it and focused on getting to know the other members of Zari’s troupe. Some were from villages, who’d chosen to leave when they came of age. Some were from families that had been wanderers for generations. All of them were welcoming. It seemed that, whether monsters or vagabonds, Nightfall was preferable to almost everyone back in Central.

While they walked, the moment when hazy day gave way to the glittering skies of night, Len could hardly believe that only twenty-four hours prior, he’d experienced the phenomenon beside Barry.

Once it was deemed time to camp, they found a large enough clearing to accommodate everyone and setup a combination of Len and Zari’s party’s protection rods. There was no sign of beasts about to attack, but while Zari’s people chittered about the protection of the gods, Len knew it was Bartholomew looking out for him, and he wasn’t sure if that soothed him.

“Halt! Who goes there?” one of the sentries called, not long after they’d begun to cook dinner.

Everyone tensed and raised their weapons or held out palms beginning to glow, but between two of the protection rods stood a small group of travelers with their own hands raised in surrender.

They stood _directly_ between two rods, already having made it past the circle. 

“Apologies!” a beautiful dark elf woman said in defense, wearing bright violet garb that looked more like a minstrel’s than a fighter’s. “We saw the light of the circle and hurried for fear of what might snatch us from the dark. Our own protection was destroyed, and we couldn’t find sanctuary elsewhere. Please. We can’t go back to our village.”

Beside her stood a handsome high elf with golden hair and brilliant blue eyes, such a contrast to her, and yet the way he held her arm said they were an intimate pair. He had meager leather armor but was the only one in anything other than cloth, and while he had a rapier in his belt, he hadn’t drawn it.

The others were all unarmed: another dark elf, a young man, whose similarly beautiful features to the woman pointed at them being family; a gnome with chestnut skin, dark eyes, and the most lovely wavy dark hair that Len had ever seen, especially on a male; and a pretty dwarven woman with brown hair and eyes but fair skin.

“Why did you leave your village?” Zari went toward them, collected as ever and scrutinizing as she eyed the eclectic group.

“Someone must have angered Lord Bartholomew,” the younger dark elf said, hugging himself with a shiver. “The rods started snuffing out one by one. Suddenly, beasts were everywhere. There were so many screams…”

His sister pulled him against her side.

The high elf said, “We tried to gather some of the remaining rods as we ran, but in our haste, we lost too many. We’ve been running since close to yesterday morning.”

“Please,” said the gnome, “we only ask to be allowed to rest.”

“We can offer our skills,” added the dwarf. “Whatever toll you may ask of us.”

More victims, yet Bartholomew swore he wasn’t cruel.

Len didn’t know what to believe.

Zari relieved the sentry with a touch on his shoulder, but though he backed off as she took his place, he didn’t lower his bow. No one’s guard dropped yet.

“Len,” Zari startled Len by calling to him, of all people, “would you join me?”

For hours Len had been holding his fears at bay. It ratcheted into his throat now, but he tried to swallow it and not let too much show on his face or in his steps as he obeyed her. “Yes?”

“They passed the first test,” Zari said. “The barrier permitted them. Let’s see if they pass the second.”

Len knew she meant his amulet, a prayer to see if they were powerful monsters in disguise. He saw the way the five seemingly frightened people looked to him in curiosity, not understanding until he pulled the amulet from his robes—then they gaped in surprise.

As Len prayed a blessing into his amulet, however, and it lit up the darkness, though the dark elf siblings squinted, none of them shied away.

“A priest,” the dark elf woman gasped. She seemed nervous, but then, of course she was; she’d just run from carnage caused by going against Bartholomew’s will, and Len’s god was another example.

“Worry not,” Zari said. “You are safe among us, and very welcome here.”

In almost no time, it was like the height of the previous night again, with a sense of peace descending, along with comradery, hope. Here, once more, was a mix of people coming together, eating and drinking and reveling, while Mick, Nate, and Ray all seeming eager to fall in line with it.

Len wished he could do the same.

“You aren’t eating?” The dark elf woman, Iris, had snuck up on him. She really was stunning, her black hair in an array of braids that came together over one shoulder, and the violet colors of her dress played beautifully against her black skin.

Len tried to smile, failing as much as he imagined he had all day. He sat away from most of the others, though Guardian had chosen to lie beside him by one of the fires. In truth, Len was starving. He had been ever since Bartholomew fed from him earlier, but he hadn’t wanted anyone to notice.

The pastry Iris offered made his mouth water, because it was filled with meat, unlike the sweet pastries from the village, something she and her companions had smuggled out when they left their own.

“I should,” Len said, accepting the treat. “You’re awfully kind, you know, when really, you should be the ones tended to. I am sorry for what Bartholomew made you go through.”

“He didn’t slight us personally.” Iris finished settling in beside Len and reached to pet a dozing Guardian. “To defy him carries consequences, but you have nothing to be sorry for. You can’t control what others do or deny in Bartholomew’s name. None of us can. But we can control what we make of what we have. My family and I are minstrels. We used to perform together with stories or song. Would you have a request of us?”

“You’re family? All of you?”

“Eddie is my husband,” Iris said of the high elf, “and Wally is my brother. But while Cisco and Caitlin are friends, aren’t good friends just as bound to us as blood?”

Len looked across the camp at Nate and Zari engaged in heated discussion—though perhaps the heat was for reasons other than intense debate. Ray was flirting as easily as he had with villagers the night before, men and women of all races, and Mick was sharing more of his homebrew with the dark elf he’d befriended.

They were a good lot, all of them.

“No truer words,” Len said. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know any stories or songs from Nightfall to request, however.”

“A genre then. Adventure? Comedy? Tragedy?”

“I think we’ve had enough of that,” Len answered quietly. “What about… a love story?”

“That we can definitely do.” 

Len stayed with Guardian as Iris rose to gather her family. They didn’t have instruments, but as they came together amidst the merriment, all other voices hushed when they sang in unison, and then broke off into glorious harmony.

_I knew you when we met  
Though you didn’t know me yet  
So familiar was your smile  
I could stay there all the while  
For time could not erase  
How I long for your embrace_

_Moments turn to centuries  
But I never stop waiting  
For true love will come again  
And never, ever end_

_I knew when we were younger  
And the world around us sharper  
That no conquest or plunder  
Could assuage my growing hunger  
For your touch sought in the dark  
Of a restless, aching heart_

_Moments turn to centuries  
But I never stop waiting  
For true love will come again  
And never, ever end_

_I knew I lost the right  
When I lost you in the night  
But our time will come again  
Like a sunset paints the land  
I am yours, remember me  
And together we shall be_

_Moments turn to centuries  
But I never stop waiting  
For true love will come again  
And never, ever end_

A bittersweet story, so clearly about Bartholomew and his lost love, for what else would the people of Nightfall sing about, but as Len ate his pastry, he felt his anxieties beginning to fade.

Iris and her family had experienced tragedy, yet here they were, uplifting others with song. Even in a land of eternal night, hope persisted.

Was there hope for Bartholomew, Len wondered?

With a brief reprieve of peace, he longed only to know more, and since his friends and so many of the others were distracted, Len’s attention drifted to Nate’s bag of books. Surely, Nate would let him borrow anything he asked for, but Len didn’t want to be asked why.

Patting Guardian and whispering for the wolf to stay put, Len finished his pastry and stood to sneak toward the books. The bag was behind Nate with a few tomes spilled out onto the ground, but the book Len wanted had found its way back on Nate’s belt.

Nate was engrossed with Zari, but to pluck someone’s purse in a crowd without an alley to hide in, Len needed something more.

“What was the first spell each of you learned?” Len asked them, crouching abruptly between them. “I’m sure it would be fascinating to compare. I wonder how many spells you each know that the other doesn’t.”

“What a thought!” Nate announced, easily taking the bait. “I’ve heard it’s much contested whether priests or wizards are more powerful.” He continued animatedly, allowing Len to pat his shoulder—and simultaneously unhook the black leather tome from his belt.

Everyone else was too lost in their gaieties to care that Len snuck to the edge of the encampment to read a book. He leaned against a tree just inside the line of protection rods to page through it. The handwriting was an intricate script, though Nate had clearly written in the margins in his own blockier lettering.

In truth, though the story was told as if from an outside view, Len could believe Bartholomew wrote it, but there was nothing in the tale that Len didn’t already know.

Until he touched the tip of a finger to one of the last passages.

 _Bartholomew swore, as he held in his hands the cold unseeing visage of the man he’d lost, that the Prime Kingdom would know greater suffering than Bartholomew himself felt in that moment, mourning and longing to one day be reunited with his_ Leonard _._

With his _love_ , the passage had read until Len touched it, but the word glowed and turned into a name.

“Surely, you do not doubt my love for you.”

Len would have gasped, but he felt a lingering calm. It no longer startled him to hear Bartholomew’s voice or feel his presence coming from around the tree.

The protection rods could not protect against _him_ after all.

Len removed his hand from the glowing name, and it faded back to _love_. Slowly, he closed the tome and glanced at Bartholomew, right there in the shadows so near him—so near everyone who had no idea who was in their midst.

“I sent that book back with your head.” Bartholomew indicated the tome. “The Prime Kingdom had to know the story to eventually bring you here. The church didn’t let it out much though, did they?”

“No,” Len said softly. “I doubt Nate would have discovered it either if he wasn’t… Nate. Please—”

“I am merely here to spend time with you, my love.” Inching closer, Bartholomew leaned against the tree beside Len, close enough that Len felt the brush of Bartholomew’s cloak against his robes. “Did you ask? Did they tell you that I can release you once you are one of my brides?”

“Yes. But you won’t.”

“I will. I want an equal. I want you willing. I love you.” Bartholomew’s hand was cool on Len’s cheek. He was so beautiful, so regal in his noble garb and entrancing with Barry’s sweet face.

Len fought to pull from his grasp. He couldn’t give in so easily when others were at risk. “The story doesn’t say anything about a werewolf attack when you first met… Leonard.”

“No,” Bartholomew said with a sigh, allowing Len’s retreat and returning his arm to his side. “Back then, it was a raiding party sent by the king, because I wasn’t turning over the ‘lesser’ races as requested. We hid then too. I couldn’t sit idly by, pretending to be Barry, so after our parting kiss, I revealed who I was and used my magic to stop the attack. Barry was the name I gave you. It’s how I like to be known, so my people think of me as one of them.”

“You visit your villages often, even now?”

“I do.”

“The parents know who you are. Do the children?”

“No. They are told when they come of age. Some are frightened to learn the truth, some are awed, some choose to seek me out and join my ranks.”

“As monsters that serve you?” Len sneered. “Mindless—”

“Only ghouls are mindless, and becoming one is only a fate for those who oppose me.”

“Even children?”

“Never the children. Only adults can be held accountable for their actions. I would never harm a child. I told you.”

He had, but Len still doubted what was true and what was fiction. “The bodies by the barrier, they only wished for freedom. The people of Central City, they are ignorant, and they can be cruel, but some are kind.” Like Shawna, the bartender, even if she too would have shrunk from Len if he touched her.

He thought of his friends then, who sought to end Bartholomew, of Zari’s people, forever on the move to stay safe from him, and now Iris and her family, who’d had to flee their own homes.

“How many have died for your vengeance and while searching for me? How many here, in your own lands? And you are the cause of it.”

Bartholomew reached once more for Len’s cheek, but he did so slower, waiting for Len to pull out of reach.

Len didn’t.

“I require loyalty, my love, but even then, death is swift if it becomes necessary. How else can I feed my armies? You think me cruel, but the people of Central City earned their fates, and the people here are part of a balance. They feed on cattle. My horde and I feed on them. But no one dies unless they go against me. Would you not call that survival? Or do you prefer your Sun God and his cold justice?”

“Is there a difference compared to cold vengeance? None of those answers are right.”

“Then maybe none are wrong.”

“I know what feels wrong.”

“Do I?” Bartholomew brushed the pad of his thumb along Len’s cheekbone. Len thought vampires didn’t require breath, yet he could feel Bartholomew’s against his lips. “Does my touch or presence feel wrong?”

Tears stung Len’s eyes, and he had to close them to stay their spill. “I have longed for you since I first dreamt of you, but you ask too much of me.”

“Then let me give,” Bartholomew said, soft and closer still. “Let me show you some of the good that awaits your journey’s end.”

His lips were as cool as his touch and just as welcome. Len knew he should fight it, and though he clung to the book in his arms rather than reach for Bartholomew, he couldn’t deny how easily his lips moved in reciprocation.

The gentle press, the subtle movement that parted their lips to let their tongues meet instead. Bartholomew’s tongue was warm and made Len shiver far more deeply than any chilling touch. 

Len felt the book tugged from his grasp and let it go, hearing it thud to the ground. The hand on his face moved to his waist to pull him closer, and he allowed that too, sagging against Bartholomew’s body. He was so hungry. The pastry hadn’t been enough. Yet the desire that stirred in him was for far more that might pass between his lips than food.

What if the others saw, Len thought? Would they think this Barry? Would Zari or someone else recognize Bartholomew for who he truly was?

The fear of being discovered made Len break the kiss with a gasp, and though he sagged further into Bartholomew’s embrace, he looked out toward the others.

Iris and her family were no longer singing. They were intermingled with the others. Everyone was _mingled_ , Len noted, sitting around the fires, closely met together.

Kissing and pawing at each other?

Len lurched from Bartholomew to look more closely, but he wasn’t imagining it. Even Mick, who’d confessed no desire for men or women, was being removed of his shirt by the dwarven woman, Caitlin. She poured some of his homebrew down his throat and chased its taste with her lips.

Nearby, Iris and her husband, Eddie, were giving equal attention to Ray, who was lying back in bliss to accept it.

Iris’s brother, Wally, was kissing Nate and beginning to untie his trousers, though Nate had been fawning over Zari all night.

In turn, Zari was with Cisco, rolling in the grass, as she held tightly to a very different gnome than the one she’d been exchanging stories with all night.

Strange as it was, the sight of them and the nearness of Bartholomew beside Len, stirred the passions deep inside his belly all the hotter. He felt calm, accepting, and had ever since…

The pastry. Just like in the village, when he’d felt mostly at ease after eating one of the sweet pastries Mick purchased, and later, how trusting he’d felt eating and drinking at the festival.

It was the _food_.

“See, my horde can give pleasure too.” Bartholomew moved to slip up behind Len, enveloping him in his firm arms, the same way the others were enveloping each other. Even Zari’s people were tangled together in pairs or more.

Len watched them all, writhing, unsure what to do. “They’re monsters. They’re your _brides_. But my amulet…” With a shaky hand, Len reached to grasp it.

“A mere trinket now,” Bartholomew said beside Len’s ear. “You lost the power to have such talismans hold power over me and mine as soon as my blood passed your lips.”

Len had doomed them all.

“You still have power, Leonard, but not in baubles. Would you use your prayers on me? Call for the sun to burn me away? Everyone is enjoying themselves. Shouldn’t we?”

“It’s not real. You’ve bewitched them.”

“They _are_ enjoying themselves, I assure you. Don’t they look like they are?”

They did, even Mick, holding Caitlin atop him, and Guardian remained lying in the grass as if nothing was amiss.

Bartholomew’s hands snaked inside Len’s robes and down between his legs. Len was half-hard, he couldn’t help it, and Bartholomew’s touch made him pulse to fulness. “Succumb, my love. Surrender to me. Offer your body, heart, and soul as you once did, and we can be together forever.”

The offer sounded so sweet, and the slow stroke of Bartholomew’s hand, his other running over Len’s chest and shoving the amulet aside, made Len want to melt in his arms and give in without a fight.

“Say yes,” Bartholomew urged, placing a kiss to Len’s neck. The fastenings had fallen open, so the kiss rested above the bite marks from before.

Len closed his eyes and let a fresh tear streak free. “Yes.”

The pain was sharp but faded like before to a stimulating feeling on par with Bartholomew’s strokes between Len’s legs. Whatever the pastry had done to coerce this, it paled in comparison to the sensations Len was rewarded with. A devil’s offer, but Len couldn’t deny that he wanted it.

_“Remind me to never cross you. You have a sharp temper.”_

_“Only where it pertains to those I hold dear. Those emissaries from the king deserved what they got.”_

_“Did they? Isn’t such harshness what you are fighting against?”_

_“And fight I am, just like you. Do you think me cruel, Leonard?”_

_“I think you passionate, love, but call me sentimental, I think you should remain the hero you were when we met.”_

Len shuddered, releasing into Bartholomew’s swiftly pumping hand. Then melt he did, weightless in the wake of Bartholomew feeding from him. It was the same wonderful daze as before, only this time, when a wrist with an open wound was placed before Len’s mouth, he drank of it willingly, and the flavor, the power in the heady substance, overwhelmed him with want of more.

This was right, wasn’t it? This was where Len belonged—with Bartholomew, while Len’s friends were free from…

Harm?

Through the haze and distant glow of red light, the orgy of moving bodies, intertwined and impassioned, looked the same—but Iris and the others did not. They’d changed. Transformed. The shape they held now was monstrous, like gargoyles with clawed hands and feet, fangs and glowing eyes, and wings arched above their prey. They were naked and wholly engrossed in their victims, who seemed none the wiser, giving in as Len was, even though they were being drank from with no signs of ceasing.

“Stop.” Len dropped Bartholomew’s wrist, half wanting to spit the blood from his mouth again. “Stop this.”

“Hush.” Bartholomew licked his wrist, closing the wound with a swipe, and turned Len toward him. He was monstrous too, with his eyes glowing red and his fangs stained equally vibrant. “They are cattle, remember? You don’t need them. You only need me. They will be added to our horde, and together, we will make the Prime Kingdom pay for everything they did to us.”

Bartholomew’s blood within Len made him feel powerful, bold—bold enough to hold Bartholomew’s gaze while he reached for the pouch on his belt.

Len knew what it contained now.

“I don’t want anyone to pay or suffer. What that king and so many others from that time did was wrong. But so are you!” Len finished with a shout and hurled a handful of the powder in Bartholomew’s face.

Bartholomew howled, flailing back against the tree as his skin sizzled. He snarled at Len, blood and burns marring his handsome features. Wings sprouted from his back, and his hands and feet became clawed like the others. For one terrifying second, his fangs were impossibly long and deadly, as he roared in anger, and then he shriveled, in a blink changing shape, clothes and all, into a bat that fled into the sky.

Len spun back around. The brides were hissing at him, their victims still entranced, some unconscious, while those they weren’t feeding from continued writhing together with no conscious thought that something was wrong.

Slowly, the brides started to rise.

Len’s amulet may be useless, but his prayers were not.

“ _Bless_!” Len outstretched his arms toward the nearest rods, and they lit up with a brighter blinding whiteness that passed on to the next rod and the next, traveling down them faster and faster, until the circle was as bright as the day with holy power.

The brides howled as Bartholomew had, flapping their wings and taking to the sky, one by one shrinking into bats that disappeared into the night.

As if a spell had lifted, the others ceased their _mingling_ , most blinking and staring at each other in surprise—and then quickly moving to cover themselves where they had become undressed.

Ray, Mick, and Zari all wobbled when they tried to sit up—but Nate didn’t move at all.

“Nate!” Len raced to him. Nate was unconscious, his complexion pallid.

“What the _hells_?” Mick bellowed.

“The brides,” Zari said. “But how—”

“Nate, wake up!” Len tried again, but his friend was still. Hurriedly, Len reached to place one hand over Nate’s heart and the other on his bite marks, praying first, “ _Restore,_ ” and then, “ _Heal_.”

For far too many breathless moments, Nate remained immobile, and then he gasped and began to cough as his eyes sprang wide. “ _Fuck_! Why do I feel dizzy lying down? Did I drink some of Mick’s brew?”

Len fell on him with a desperate embrace, too shaken to explain.

It took several minutes of bustling and rousing for everything to be made clear. The others remembered what had happened but not what had brought its end.

“Those bastards fed on you too?” Mick motioned to the bite marks on Len’s neck, as everyone gathered more tightly around the fires, fearful of the brides’ return. The rods had dimmed of their imbued power.

“It wasn’t them,” Len admitted. “It was Bartholomew.”

Zari’s people looked anxious to hear that the vampire lord had been among them. 

“How did you get him to leave?” Zari asked.

“With this.” Len held out the pouch, diminished of some of its powder but still full.

“What is it?” Ray peered at it closely.

“Me,” Len said, opening the pouch for everyone to see inside. He remembered what it was. He could feel it—the dust of Leonard’s bones. “It’s time I told you all the truth.”

TBC...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're still with me! Let me know in the comments. ^_^


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooboy, this one is long. Enjoy! And I hope your 2021 is off to a great start.

There was no more merrymaking or song. Those who had been eating and drinking before the brides bewitched them stared at hunks of bread and full glasses of ale with disdain.

Except Mick, who downed the rest of his homebrew in a gulp.

“That’s impossible,” Ray said, after Len had finished confessing. “ _We_ invited _you_ on this journey. The chances—”

“Make perfect sense if Bartholomew was luring Len here, and if he always knew where his book was.” Nate held the black-leather tome Len had retrieved from beside the tree. “The chances are plenty good if he set all this in motion.”

“And you _knew_?” Mick bellowed, throwing his empty bottle into the grass at Len’s feet. It didn’t break, but it might as well have for how broken Len felt in its wake.

He didn’t only remember the flashes of memory he had seen when Bartholomew fed from him. He remembered his childhood—his _first_ childhood. He remembered his mother. His father. They were both darklings. In this life, Len had been taught that his kind were made from the union of a human and a dark elf, but certainly darklings mated with each other and other races as well.

In essence, _Leonard_ had been a pure darkling, but that didn’t change how outsiders to Keystone had always treated him like trash.

He remembered a lonely, wandering life, seeking adventure outside of Keystone, but discovering disappointment again and again outside its borders. It was only when he returned home, his parents long dead, that he met a handsome young human named Barry, who changed everything.

But as much as Len remembered, it wasn’t everything, and what he could recall felt like the remnants of a dream, not truly connected to him. He had loved Bartholomew once, he truly believed he could again, but he also remembered, as Leonard, fearing what Bartholomew could become if pushed too far.

“We can’t stay here tonight,” Zari said, when the silence after Mick’s outburst stretched too long. “Bartholomew and his brides know where we are. Leave the book, and they won’t be able to track us.” She stood, while Nate clung stubbornly to the tome.

“Leaving the book won’t be enough,” Len said. “He can still track me.”

“He shouldn’t be able to.” Zari looked at him, but then, one by one, she and the others each darkened with a look of recognition. “Unless… you fed from him.”

“You’re a spawn?” Mick snarled, hands twisting along the handle of his axe.

“No,” Len swore.

“A bride then?” Nate asked more neutrally.

“Not yet, but I’ve fed from him twice.”

All those gathered gave a collective lean away from Len. 

“You idiot!” Mick leapt to his feet. “Do you want your blood to stain our blades?!”

“Mick!” Ray leapt after him, hands outstretched to prevent that axe from swinging, though Mick hadn’t truly raised it. “We can’t possibly understand what Len is going through. He has a whole past he didn’t know, a complicated history.”

“And what about what almost became of us?” With an angry swat at his own neck, Mick indicated the bite marks still left from the dwarven bride, Caitlin, who he never would have allowed touch him so intimately, let alone feed from him, if he’d been in his right mind.

“ _Almost_ ,” Nate reminded him, rising more slowly and leaving the book in the grass. “Len saved us, you’ll recall.”

“No.” Len shook his head, finally rising himself. Most of Zari’s brethren had already started to get up, gathering their things, but they backed away from him that much farther. Len couldn’t blame them. “I’m a liability. You should move on without me.”

“And leave you for Bartholomew?” Ray said. “Never. If he turns you, these people are doomed forever.”

“Everyone would be doomed,” Nate reiterated. “The barrier would fall, and Bartholomew’s horde would wash over the lands.”

“It would be better to kill you where you stand,” Zari said coolly, hands moving for her mace and dagger.

Guardian growled, close at Len’s side—more Len’s side than Ray’s.

“No,” Len said again, but to Guardian. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want anyone hurt for his sake. “Stand down. Guardian, please.” He dropped beside the wolf, but Guardian kept baring his teeth. “She is right to wish my end.”

“No!” Ray cried, dropping down into the grass with them and spreading his arms like a shield.

The others froze, but Len could see the intent in Zari’s eyes and swirling in Mick’s too.

“Len isn’t our enemy. He doesn’t have to be.” Cautiously digging one hand into Guardian’s fur, who allowed the act with a grateful nudge, Ray raised his other hand to clasp Len’s shoulder. “I hoped to save Bartholomew. Perhaps we still can. Together.”

“I don’t know…”

“You said you’re starting to remember who you were,” Nate spoke, more analytical than accusing. “Was he the good man the stories say?”

The first thought that came to Len was how Barry had always been a draw for children and animals. He had a nature that pulled people in. He told Len that he still visited the villages, not only as part of that initial ruse to seduce Len, but because he wanted to be with them. He wanted to be with his people. Whether Barry from the past or only days ago, he was so good with children.

He was also good at felling his enemies.

“Yes,” Len said honestly, “but he had darkness in him even then.”

“Who doesn’t?” Nate shrugged.

That seemed to please Ray, who squeezed Len’s shoulder, but Mick huffed, still tense.

Slowly, Zari dropped her hands from her weapon hilts, seeming honestly sympathetic, however wary. “Do you think he can be saved?” she asked.

If the good in Bartholomew was real, and Len believed it was, then the real question was whether it could outweigh the darkness he had drowned himself in for so many centuries. “I want him to be.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Ray said with finality, standing to block Len from the others and shield him more formally. “No one is going to harm our friend.”

Nate smiled.

Guardian sat back on his haunches, tail wagging happily.

Mick sheathed his axe—but he didn’t look very happy about it.

Zari’s troupe said nothing, merely returned to gathering their things for the journey ahead, while Zari herself stayed to confront Len.

“You told us that Bartholomew can see through the wolf. You’re enough of a beacon. We should leave Guardian with the book.”

“What?” Ray looked around in distress. “But he’s… he’s loyal.”

“To Bartholomew,” Mick growled.

“To _me_. He’s my companion!” Ray insisted.

Nate shook his head that he would not speak against either side, but while Len would have accepted Guardian’s loss, Ray was adamant.

“Guardian comes with us.”

“Fine,” Zari said, and again, Mick huffed. “If Len has truly taken Bartholomew’s blood twice, then the vampire lord is already amongst us more than any wolf’s eyes would allow. If you trust Guardian, he might help more than hinder.

“Regardless, we need to move on. It’s not safe here any longer, and if we hurry, we might reach another shrine before morning. Better than the trees.”

“What about using the mountains?” Nate pulled out his map and showed it to her, dragging his finger along the route. “It’s far more direct to the castle.”

“Too risky. There’s said to be settlements inside, and we could be trapped. Best to take the long way. Let’s get moving.” At last, Zari joined her people in striking the camp. She’d always had a reserve about her, but still some kindness, a smile.

Now, she was a pillar of ice, keeping one eye on Len.

It hurt worse to think that if only Zari had used her holy symbol to test the brides, instead of Len using his that no longer held any sway over them, all this might have been avoided.

But then, the truth would have come out eventually, and Mick would still be looking at Len as he was now—like an enemy. 

Ray and Nate tried to comfort Len with supportive looks and pats on his shoulder. Nate was intrigued and started not so subtly asking Len about his past, anything he remembered. There was much Len could recount, but he still felt detached from it.

Even so, Mick refused to speak to him.

In short order, they were ready to move, the last act being to gather the protection rods, which were no longer imbued with _Blessing_ from Len’s prayer but still held that faint blue light to indicate they were working.

Len could see at night as well as any human by day, which was why it was so startling when the last of the rods went out, the darkness thick around them, yet in the shadows, Len could see _eyes_ —innumerable eyes deep-set in the brows of beasts with rows and rows of teeth.

“Run!” Zari cried before Len could, and the whole of the troupe took off, looking for openings in the pack that was quickly closing in around them.

The only hole that opened was due to one of the creatures launching itself at Zari’s fellows and mauling one of them into the ground—but it was an opening, and others ran for it. Some tried to fight and save their friend; others recognized the futility and kept on, like Len, who sprinted toward safety, though there seemed to be more beasts than trees.

“Guardian, clear the way!” Ray directed the wolf, who listened without question, bounding ahead to snap at any beasts beginning to close the hole that had opened and leading those who fled.

“Behind us!” Mick urged those vying for escape, waiting for enough to get past him, even as he too ran, so that he had a clear shot to hurl one of his alchemy bottles.

This wasn’t fire but exploded with a crack of ice that spread for an instant like water before freezing, trapping the feet of a few creatures and making several others slip and tumble.

“ _Control Water_!” Nate shot out a hand, as if it was second nature to respond to one of Mick’s ice bombs that way, and the ice jutted up like spikes that impaled the creatures that had been caught, and even some still slipping and trying to move forward.

But there were so many, and Zari’s people who had stopped to save their downed friend were being torn apart…

Len skidded to a stop, staring back at the carnage in horror. Bartholomew was angry, and he was going to kill them all for what Len did.

“Please,” Len whispered. “Don’t…”

“Len!”

Ray appeared, seizing Len’s arm and dragging him onward. Len was lighter without his pack.

He’d forgotten his pack! Len had his crossbow, his dagger, his belt with the powder and extra bolts, but everything else was lost, though that seemed so meaningless when people were dying.

“There’s a cave!” Nate called over the screams and chaos. “An entrance into the mountains up ahead!”

“No!” Zari cried back, close at his side as they ran.

“Do you have a better idea?!” Nate rebuffed.

Zari had no answer, and as Mick caught up to them, and Len and Ray soon caught up as well, Len nodded for Ray to release him. He could run.

They had to run.

“Someone better cover me,” Nate went on, running blindly, as he swung his bag forward to start looking through books—without looking at the trees in his path, yet he seemed to always know when one was there and dodged effortlessly.

“We don’t have time—” Mick tried.

“We do if it’s a spell that matters!”

Some of Zari’s people were gone, but enough still fled, on either side of them, and many were blessedly ahead, that Zari drew her weapons and turned from Nate’s side to take up his rear and defend.

She whirled like a dancer, ne’er a hesitation in her motion, dual-wielding mace and dagger like the most angelic of holy warriors. Len almost halted his fleeing feet yet again, watching the way she cut through beasts as they leapt at her.

When she had a moment’s pause, she closed her eyes only long enough to center herself and crossed her arms outward to unleash a wave of fire as if from her very essence.

Dark magic, from the Lady of Chaos, for a wizard might summon fire that exploded like a bomb, but someone of the Dark Goddess could control it in a wave that spared the few of Zari’s people who might have been caught in it. So, too, were the trees spared where Mick’s alchemy wouldn’t have been as kind.

Funny how she was called Chaos while actively avoiding it.

“Len! Focus!” Ray tugged on Len’s arm again, and then had to spin and slash out with his sword, using his shield to deflect one of the beasts that might have snapped at Len’s head.

Len felt useless. More than useless.

Culpable.

This was all his fault…

“Sleep!” Zari cried at the encroaching masses, for there were still so many, no matter how many they felled. Instantly, a swath of them crumbled, but that spell Len knew, a common one among wizards who followed the Twilight God, and it could only affect so many at once.

Mick, too, was hindered, for swinging his axe slowed him while running, so it remained on his back, his feet swift with the occasional pause to throw a bottle—usually that exploded in a flash of green and made the creatures sizzle when it touched them.

Some of Zari’s people were firing bows or slashing out with other weapons to assist, but mostly, they ran. They knew they would share the same fate of the first who’d fallen if they didn’t.

“That spell better be worth it!” Ray cried at a still searching Nate, slashing again and again with his sword, but the beasts seemed to be manifesting out of the darkness itself.

“Remember what I told those villagers the night of the festival?” Nate said as calmly as any other time he’d been dedicated to finding the right magic.

“ _Bless_!”

No, Len didn’t think that was—wait!

Len jerked his head toward Zari, who had spoken the prayer, and she was magnificent, a true warrior of Trinity gods, taking power from all three, as her mace lit up with holy light that made the beasts sizzle on impact far faster than Mick’s acid.

If Len truly was the cause of all this, he couldn’t stand idly by.

“ _Bless_!” he prayed in kind, funneling the power into his crossbow as he grabbed it over his shoulder and swung it around to fire. The bolt soared like a shooting star through the night, cutting across the real stars that glittered above, and when it landed, it erupted in an explosion that burned many of the beasts where they ran and threw several others off their course.

Len never remembered his prayers being that powerful before.

“Bless mine as well!” Ray threw down his sword and shield to pull his bow.

“Caves ahead!” someone shouted, one of Zari’s troupe, reaching salvation first.

Still running, despite their furious battle, Len was having trouble catching his breath, winded and weak, likely from more than just the fight. Bartholomew had drunk from him, and with that loss and no time to eat, Len’s vision swam as he prayed once more, “ _Bless!_ ”

Ray’s arrow became a torch, and he pulled it taut to release—

“Ah!”

A beast tackled him.

No, two.

_Three._

The arrow still loosed into the sky, but it came back only a few yards from me being straight up and down, taking only a handful of creatures out with it.

“Ray!” Len dove for him, dropping his crossbow and pulling his dagger that he once again prayed into, “ _Bless!_ ” He saw spots in his vision, but he didn’t care, slashing furiously with the holy blade at any part of the beasts on Ray he could find.

They howled and whined and eventually scampered away, leaving a bloody and unconscious Ray, who barely looked like he was breathing.

“ _H-Heal_ …” Len stuttered, dagger falling from trembling hands as he pressed them to Ray’s chest.

For the first time, using a prayer _hurt_.

“Yes!” Nate cried like a distant echo, even though Len would have sworn he was close, and a spattering of Magic Tongue spilled from the wizard’s lips, ending in a shouted, “ _Swarm!_ ”

Len turned just in time to watch a horde of rats form up out of the ground and unleash upon the beasts like locusts.

Len had to keep healing Ray, but the light from his prayer was dim and didn’t seem to be doing anything. He’d felt so powerful unleashing that first _Bless_ , but with that power came an extra cost, it seemed, and he’d used it three times, after already healing Nate earlier.

He needed to eat.

He needed to… sleep.

“Quickly!” someone called, but Len didn’t recognize the voice. A woman, maybe?

“More are coming!” Zari warned.

“Our barrier is stronger than rods! Hurry!” urged the unfamiliar voice.

Len’s prayer darkened completely, and he fell forward onto Ray’s still chest.

It wasn’t enough.

He thought he heard Guardian howl, thought he felt hands lift him, but the next thing he knew was oblivion.

XXXXX

Len gasped awake and instantly cringed when he tried to sit up. Everything hurt.

Ray! Where was Ray?

Where were the others?!

“ _Rest_ ,” a firm female voice preceded even firmer hands pressing him back onto the cot.

It took Len a moment to truly see where he was, even with his darkling eyes cutting through the general darkness. At first, he thought that above him twinkled stars, but as his vision cleared, he saw that it was stone, beautiful with sparkling bits of mineral all throughout the rock like its own night sky.

There were lights but not ones made of fire, not torches or the usual _Light_ spells Len was used to. These lights were softer, faintly glowing crystals in blue, red, or purple, similar to how the protection rods glowed when they were active. The ceiling was low, like being in a carved out dwelling inside a cave, and every bit of furniture or adornment seemed to be made of stone or crystal as well.

They were in the mountains.

The woman, too, wore stones and crystals around her neck and as rings and on bangles dangling from her wrists. Len didn’t know her. She was human, with blue eyes, dark hair, and yet a warm tan to her skin despite being in a land without sun in the darkest depths of its terrain. She hadn’t been with Zari’s people, but as Len listened to her speak, he thought he remembered hearing her voice.

“Your friends are fine. They’ll want to know you’re awake, but you should rest. Your elven friend had a rough go of it, but I was able to heal him.”

_Ray_. “But… he stopped breathing,” Len lamented.

“He did,” she said softly. “He might not have survived at all if you hadn’t poured so much power into him. You nearly killed yourself, but you’re the reason he lives as much as anything I did. Don’t do that again.”

He lived. Ray was okay. “Thank you,” Len said, relaxing finally and enjoying the feel of a cot rather than cold, hard ground to rest upon. “Um…”

“Nora. One of our village shaman. And you don’t have to worry about those beasts anymore. The crystals protect us.” Nora indicated the glowing crystals, some set into the stone directly, others in sconces.

Zari had told them not to trust any villages, especially in the mountains where they might become trapped, but they must have seen no other alternative.

Len was glad. After all, he didn’t blame Degnan for what had happened in the first village.

The brides, on the other hand…

“He up?”

Len tensed at the more familiar voice of Mick, as the burly half-giant entered. The entrance was a hollowing in the rock covered by a cloth that he parted and let fall closed behind him.

_Just_ him.

All Len could remember then was how Mick had sneered at him, threatening and unforgiving after discovering the truth of Len’s lineage.

“He’ll be fine after some rest,” Nora said, rising from a stone seat beside him. “I’ll check in on the elf and give you two some privacy.”

_No_ , Len thought foolishly, almost lurching back up into a sitting position. There was no axe on Mick’s back, but his alchemy belt remained. How easily might he pour one of his acid vials down Len’s body…?

Nora was gone before Len could say anything, and Len struggled not to shake.

“I-I-I…”

“I’m an ass.”

Len blinked at Mick, who didn’t look quite as fiery as usual, as he came over to take the seat Nora had vacated. “What?”

“I got a temper. What else is new?” Mick slumped down on the seat. “You’ve saved us more than I can count. All of us. Nate. Ray. Me.” He held out his arm that still showed the bite marks from the wolf, red again like he’d been itching it out of habit. 

All at once, Len’s tensions fled. Mick was apologizing, even though Len had been the one in the wrong. “I’m sorry I lied,” he said, emotion thick in his voice. 

“Your boy’s a vampire. Who wouldn’t have?”

Len laughed before he could stop the sound.

Mick cracked a smile, and so too eased the last of Len’s apprehension.

“Awake?!” Nate all but shouted, barreling into the abode without parting the cloth door first, which caused it to follow him a good foot, stuck to the top of his head. “Thank the gods, heavens and hells, and all the magic on this plane! We thought we’d lost you.” He rushed to the opposite side of the cot from Mick, looking ready to embrace Len, but he must have thought better of Len’s weakness, and chose to grasp his hand. “We’re lucky this settlement has such gifted healers, or we might have lost you and Ray.”

“The people here seem okay?” Len looked between his friends.

“Saved our hides.” Mick shrugged. “We’re not lowering our guards, but everyone’s still breathing.”

“They have their own worries,” Nate said. “Seems there’s some affliction that only the people of this village suffer. Every so often, someone falls into a death-like sleep, slowly drained of their life until they pass. I assumed it was Bartholomew or his brides sneaking in at night, given we’re much closer to the castle, but they claim there’s never any bite marks. Does that sound like anything you’re familiar with?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Me either, though I feel like I should. I promised Nora, in exchange for her help, that I’d happily look into it from a magical perspective. Even if these people are loyal to Bartholomew, that might keep them a little loyal to us too.”

“What about Zari?” Len asked. “How many did she lose?”

“Too many,” Mick snarled, but at least Len knew it wasn’t directed at him anymore. “Even she’s been swayed by these people, her troupe all welcomed and healed. She still refuses any offer for them to stay longer than recovering though. Eventually, they’ll return to the wood.”

That didn’t surprise Len, even if the people here were trustworthy and safe with their powerful warding. “Can I see Ray?”

“Have something to eat and drink first.” Nate snatched up some provisions and water nearby. “Then we can take you. Ray’s going to take a little longer to mend, but he _will_ mend, and that’s thanks to you.”

The sentiment was appreciated, and Len wished he could smile at it, but he couldn’t shake the guilt that he had also been the cause. “Ray’s hurt _because_ of me.”

“Because of that bastard vampire,” Mick growled, meaty fists clenching. His amber eyes seemed to glow for a moment, but then they softened. “Sorry. I know he’s your… love or whatever, but—”

“No.” Len shook his head. “He was my love in another life. In this one, you go right ahead and be angry. I know I am.”

Neither appeared to know what to say to that, so neither tried. Back before in camp, Len had feared that Bartholomew’s guess about his friends turning on him would be right, that they wouldn’t understand or forgive him, not after seeing how angry Mick had been, but now, they had proven Len right instead.

Conversation turned to the settlement, to its people, who were a mix of races like usual in Nightfall, but with a fair many more dwarves. After a while of talking, and Len eating and drinking his fill, he insisted on seeing Ray. His body ached from how much energy had been drained from him, but as long as he moved slowly, he could manage.

He even made a point of grabbing his belt, though he let his crossbow stay against the wall, where someone must have laid it. He didn’t have anything else. His pack was gone.

Len expected more low ceilings when they existed the abode, but he lost his breath at the actual view. Smaller dwellings carved into the rock like the one Len had been in were everywhere, but the settlement itself was inside a vast mountain, with ceilings too high to see in most places, and it stretched on for what looked like miles, crystal lights like lampposts dotting as far as he could see in the distance.

This wasn’t a village. It was a city.

Len noticed that Nate’s steps were uneven on the rocky ground, but Mick walked as fluidly as if he were back in the woods, and he helped Len, preventing Len from tumbling on the unfamiliar terrain.

“This must be like home for you,” Len noted of his giant-dwarf friend.

Mick took in a breath as though catching a scent only he could detect. “There’s an energy to the stone, to places like this, that the surface never has. There better not be any cave spiders though.” He glanced around in disdain.

“You better not throw any alchemist fire if there are,” Nate teased.

They laughed.

The abode where Ray was being kept was larger than Len’s, maybe Nora’s main hut for healing, given the herbs hanging about and stuck in jars and bottles everywhere when they entered.

“There’s my savior,” Ray huffed at their arrival.

He looked rough indeed, lying in a cot like Len had been, but bundled in blankets and shivering to show his fever. Sweat covered his brow, and he looked terribly pale, the color dim in his usually bright blue eyes, and a few scars remained where his skin peeked out from the blankets.

A quiet woof reminded Len of Guardian, who he’d last seen charging ahead of everyone to clear the way. The wolf got up from where he’d been lying beneath Ray’s cot and trotted over to sniff and then lick Len’s hand.

Another healer, a dwarven woman, was mixing up a salve nearby but paid them little mind as they approached Ray’s cot.

“Brother.” Ray reached for Len, trying to sit up. “I am so glad you’re—”

“Lie back.” Nora appeared from another room as if phrasing through the very stone. “And stop talking. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Good thing _you’re_ not her patient,” Mick nudged Nate, who nudged him right back.

“I only—” Ray tried, but Nora shushed him.

“ _You_ need to rest,” she said. “Those beasts are like a plague if they get their claws in you, and they got in plenty. Now, hush. And you two.” She whirled on Mick and Nate. “Stop scratching!”

Len had noticed Mick scratching the bite on his arm, but now he saw that Nate was scratching too—at the bite on his neck from one of the brides.

Nora snatched the mortar and pestle from the dwarven woman, who looked mildly perturbed. “A wolf,” Nora said of Mick’s bite, spreading some of the salve over the marks, and then did the same to Nate’s, “and a vampire. Seems you’ve met most of what Nightfall has to offer, all reflections of Lord Bartholomew and the different forms he takes.”

Len hadn’t actually seen Bartholomew become a wolf, though he knew he could, but he’d seen both the monstrous and small-sized version of him being a bat like the vampire at his core.

“Is that all a vampire lord can turn into?” Len asked.

“And mist,” Nate said.

“What sort of creature would be made of—?”

“Can you have this discussion away from my recovering patient,” Nora broke in. “You should be resting more too, so don’t overdo it,” she chided Len.

Mick and Nate gave little protest, perhaps used to Nora already, or maybe merely grateful for the salve that seemed to calm their itching, but when Len tried to follow them out of the abode, Ray waved a frantic hand for him to lean over his cot.

“Thank you, Brother,” he said with quiet though potent emotion. “And you are my brother, all of ours. We’ll return the favor, I swear it. We will save your love yet.”

“Ray…”

“Will you two listen to me?” Nora reprimanded them once more.

“She actually really likes me,” Ray said, tossing her a wink. “I can tell.”

Len would have laughed, especially with how Nora pursed her lips, but his heart felt heavy and wasn’t lessened when he exited with the others. Guardian remained behind, plopped back down beneath Ray’s cot to live up to his namesake.

Len couldn’t pay much attention to what Nate and Mick discussed outside, though he vaguely heard mention of what they should do next, which sadly, had to be to wait until Ray was better.

Zari appeared, a little rough looking too, but healthy, and expressed her gratitude that Len was well. Len even thought she meant it, though his mind wasn’t really on her or her people either.

Zari’s troupe would eventually head back out toward their next shrine, but Len and his friends would continue through the mountains for Bartholomew’s castle.

“Just in case this settlement is loyal to their lord,” Nate whispered, “let’s avoid saying too loudly that we’re planning to kill him.”

Kill him. Save him.

Len wasn’t sure which he wanted.

What did _Bartholomew_ even want anymore? He was clearly furious with Len. He might simply attack him next time they met and make the decision for him.

It was the next day, not that day meant anything here any more than it did outside. This shortcut meant they could reach the castle in a day or two. Even if Ray needed a couple days to rest, this would all be over soon.

One way or another.

XXXXX

Len excused himself from his friends, swearing that he felt fine to be on his own, just needed to clear his head, and if he felt weak, he would go back to rest.

They let him leave, and he wandered for a while, looking for a quiet corner, ever vigilant of his footing on the stone. There were many people about, many darklings, so Len hardly garnered much attention. It was like an inversion of Central City, the same bustle and expanse, but completely different in every other way.

Len found an outcropping of rock, hidden in shadows behind several abodes, about the shape and size of a bench, and so he sat. There were no crystals here, just a path declining around a bend, though Len could see well enough. He took out his prayer book, paging through it, but there was nothing new, nothing truly useful that he didn’t already know.

The memories that had returned to him reminded him that he hadn’t had such abilities in his other life. He only faintly remembered his mother and all her teachings of the three gods, but Leonard had wanted nothing to do with any of them. He refused to put faith in gods when anywhere he traveled outside his home was filled with ignorant people who hated him for no reason than his lineage.

What did that make Len that the Sun God allowed him prayer and power, the ability to heal or strike an enemy with holy light? Was it only because the priests had raised him, shaping him as a tool to kill his only love…?

With a mad surge of anger, Len chucked his prayer book at the stone wall behind him—only it wasn’t a wall, he realized, not having paid much mind to those shadows, because the book vanished instead of striking with a thud.

As Len’s eyes adjusted to cut through the deeper darkness, it wasn’t his prayer book that he saw, but the approach of glowing, _red_ eyes.

Len leapt up as Bartholomew’s snarling visage appeared. He knew he didn’t have the strength to even a tempt a failed uttering of _Sunlight_ , and so he scrambled back, hitting the wall of one of the abodes that had him too easily caged.

Bartholomew was going to tear him apart for denying him.

But the snarl wasn’t angry, Len realized. It was there, fangs and eyes and all, but the expression was soaked in grief.

“My love, never fear me,” Bartholomew said, reining in his vampire traits until he was Barry again. The side of his face where the dust of Leonard’s bones had struck him still looked red, but it was healing.

Len debated reaching for the powder now, but he didn’t think he would be fast enough.

“Please,” Bartholomew tried again, approaching slowly. “I would never strike you or harm you in my anger, as the priests that raised you did.”

The fear in Len gave way to the fury he’d found so many times before. “No? You’d merely sick your beasts on me and have them kill my friends. You promised no one would die!”

“And they haven’t. That woman with you, her people are not dead, merely added to my horde. I meant the same for all of them.”

“That’s not good enough.” Len flattened himself to the stone as Bartholomew crept closer. “They’re my friends!”

“They still would be. Don’t you understand? I…” Bartholomew trailed off, the grief on his face deepening. He stopped his advance. “I’m doing this all wrong, aren’t I? I’ve missed you. I’m impatient. You want your friends spared, but the only way I know to ensure that is if they join us.”

It was like dealing with a wounded viper, wanting to help it, but knowing that eventually, it would strike, simply because of its nature.

And yet, Len believed Bartholomew meant what he said, however misguided he may be.

Len tried to relax from the stone, seeing now that Bartholomew meant him no harm, even though Len had harmed him. He reached for the sweet face he had fallen for more than once and placed his palm on the red of Bartholomew’s marred cheek.

Bartholomew pressed against it.

“Give me a reason to be with you,” Len said. “No tricks. No seduction. Be Barry again. Convince me that is who you truly are.”

Bartholomew turned his head to kiss Len’s palm, green eyes glittering with tears. “The children here know me as all do. Shall we look in on them?” With a soft smile as Bartholomew stepped back, his elegant noble clothes shimmered and changed into the simpler garb he’d worn as Barry.

Len took Barry’s hand.

Barry led them down the winding path that disappeared around the rocks. It connected with another path, behind the abodes but lit up with crystals to guide the way. There was a single stone abode at the bottom, a school, Len guessed, since in the open area around it were children at play.

“Barry!” one of them cried when he saw them, and all the children ceased their frolicking to rush at Barry and hug him fiercely, forcing Len and Barry’s hands to part, so Barry could attend to them.

None of them feared the man they didn’t yet know was their lord. They thought him a traveling magician, a friend.

Like in the first village, Barry dazzled them with sparks of light, simple illusions that thrilled them. Len watched with the same fondness he’d felt the first time. He played as well for a little while, but eventually sat to continue watching.

After a while, he noticed a puddle nearby, projecting back his reflection. Len’s dark bluish skin, his silvery eyes, his white hair—he’d lived with it twice now, and he remembered why he cut his hair so short in that other life.

He’d hated it.

He’d hated it until Barry told him it was beautifully.

“What’s wrong?” Barry asked, coming over to sit beside Len, as the children were called back into the school, disappointed at having their fun ended but dutiful.

“You always look at me like… like I’m something radiant, but it’s difficult for me to see these colors,” Len touched his cheek and a tuft of his hair that had fallen forward from being tied back, “and not wish they were different.”

There was nothing of the vampire in Barry when he leaned against Len’s side and softly spoke, “Tell me, when you look at a sunset, are there any of its colors you find ugly?”

“Of course not.”

“Because all colors are beautiful. So, how could color, any color, on something as beautiful as you, ever be ugly?”

Tears pricked Len’s eyes, and he leaned against Barry in kind.

Eventually, Barry took Len’s chin and pulled him into a gentle kiss.

His lips were cool, his skin often cool to the touch, yet Len remembered times when he felt warm. Were those times only because he had fed from someone?

The thought made Len cringe and pull away.

Barry’s green eyes shone at him in worry.

“Promise me no more death,” Len said. “No more killing, of any kind, and not just my friends.”

Barry’s expression hardened. “And if I am defied?”

“Forgive.”

“What of the Prime Kingdom and their hatred of people like you? Of dark elves—”

“ _Forgive_. Let them live with their hatred, and we can stay here.”

“You would forgive that easily, after the boy you mentioned they killed? He wasn’t even a darkling or a dark elf, just an elf in the wrong city.”

It stung to be reminded of Michael. But it stung to be reminded of all the death Len had seen. “Maybe we can change their minds if you show mercy. Your beasts could feed on animals. Your vampires too—”

“Drinking the blood of animals makes a vampire ill, and we cannot feed from the dead.”

“Then… you, your brides, your spawn, surely there are people willing to offer their blood willingly. A bite alone would not change them. And the werewolves don’t need to harm anyone. Degnan was a family man. And the ghouls… you could free them. If they are mindless and can never be human again, let them die.”

As quickly as the hardness had taken Barry’s face, it softened. “My kind-hearted Leonard, if I agree to all that, does it mean you will be mine again?”

It wasn’t the life Leonard had planned on with his love, and it wasn’t remotely close to what Len had ever thought his life would be, but if all that were possible, and he got to have Barry…

“Yes,” Len said without pause or guile. “Forever.”

Barry kissed him again with a passionate swoop, more heated than before, deeper and probing and promising of more, with an arm coiling tight around Len’s waist. “Come, my love,” he breathed hotly on Len’s lips. “Your injured friend is resting, the others bathing. Which gives me an idea.” The smirk that alighted Barry’s face was mischievous, but before Len could ask what he meant, Barry rose and pulled Len after him.

They found another path that took them deeper into the mountain and farther from the lights of the city. When Len saw the underground hot spring that Barry had brought him to, all he could think of was the caked-on grime from days of traveling that he couldn’t wait to wash clean.

Barry started to undress, and Len realized with a start that he had yet to see him nude. Faintly in his dreams, even more faintly in his memories, but all their heated moments in this life had been messy fumbling through layers. Len had never seen or touched Barry, as he had been touched.

And oh, Barry was beautiful. The redness of his cheek did nothing to dull his radiance. His cream skin, his lean muscle, the tuft of dark hair between his legs framing his impressive sex, already starting to harden, but though Barry grinned at Len’s staring, he turned away to slip into the water.

Len hurried to do the same, even removing his amulet, which he never took off. Barry had had his mouth on Len; it seemed silly for Len to be bashful of being nude in his presence, and so he stripped without shame and dropped into the spring beside Barry.

The warmth felt incredible and instantly soothed Len’s aching body. He undid the ties of his hair to set it free and dipped his head beneath the surface in utter rapture. A bath had never felt so good.

Barry gazed at him fondly, also having wet his hair, slicked back from his face, and Len swam over to sit on the rocks beside him, with the water up to their shoulders.

“The only thing I regret is how it’ll feel putting those soiled clothes back on,” Len said.

“My love, you forget I am a gifted wizard. I can handle cleansing soiled clothes.” Barry waved his hand toward the pile of Len’s belongings, and a silvery mist floated forth, enveloping Len’s clothes and causing them to glow.

Len smiled in wonder. There was so much Barry could do that was good, miraculous, not cruel or malicious.

“I’m afraid I have more than one regret,” Barry said softly, floating closer to Len until their sides touched. “I have so many. I am sorry I allowed my beasts to cause you and your friends so much harm. I didn’t intend—”

“I forgive you. If you swear—”

“No more death here, I swear. Will you be with me then, my Leonard? Completely?”

“As your bride?” Len asked wistfully, intending the double meaning.

“As my equal. I will release you, so that you will be a lord at my side. You will have all your memories, vividly, without losing any of the man you are now, and we can finally be together again.”

That sounded perfect. Len didn’t know what it would be like to be a vampire, but if he didn’t have to hurt people, he could handle drinking blood. If he had Barry, he could handle living forever. And the sun was hardly something he’d mourn losing, when it pained him so, beautiful though it may be. 

Barry took Len’s face in both hands and kissed him. “Well?”

“Yes,” Len said, breathless and heartfelt. “I am yours, my love. Always.”

The renewed kiss was deeper still, Barry’s arms sliding around Len’s naked waist. Len knew Barry’s hands would stray, but this time, having Barry beside him, naked, Len wanted to touch too.

He pressed one hand to Barry’s chest, and unlike Len, who had removed his amulet, Barry still wore the red soul gem, which Len gripped reverently. His grip was even more reverent when his other hand slid lower to close around Barry’s sex.

Barry gasped and bucked into his touch, swiftly reaching between Len’s legs to grasp him in kind. It was fumbling and desperate, like two virgins madly seeking passion. Only Len was the true virgin between them, though the part of him that was Leonard remembered what it felt like to be filled by the pulsing flesh in his palm.

“I am yours…” Len panted between harried kisses he couldn’t seem to stop peppering on Barry’s lips. “But… make love to me properly. Please.”

“With pleasure, my love.”

Barry lifted them out of the bath like Len weighed nothing, and suddenly, Len was laid out on the stone at the edge of the spring. He was on his back, with Barry between his legs, slithering low to tuck his head in the gap of Len’s thighs and swallow him in one swift motion.

Despite the heat and wetness already present, the addition made Len thrust upward and moan. At the same time that Barry sucked Len’s length, long, slender fingers prodded at the bud of Len’s entrance beneath his heavy sack.

The first finger breached Len’s entrance, slick from the spring, as well as Barry adding spit and Len’s own precome to ease the way. Barry kept sucking Len’s length while stretching him, which soon started driving Len mad.

“Please!” Len cried, and Barry must have read his mind that Len meant reprieve rather than more just yet, for Barry slid off with a pop and licked more lightly up the underside of Len’s cock. He continued his attentions but with less fervid haste, allowing the stretch of his finger to become two.

The welcome intrusion that filled Len made him feel full in a way no other completeness he’d experienced, yet the press of those fingers stretching him open and teasing at a bundle of explosive pleasure inside him was but a preview to connecting with Barry as Len wanted.

He’d never been so possessed by someone, because no one had ever wanted to possess him. Barry wanted him. Barry loved him. Barry was better than any god that may or may not exist.

Barry raked his free hand up Len’s chest to trace feathering fingers across each nipple, and then reached higher to gentle hold Len’s neck, tipping it back to see it arch, as though the pulse of Len’s veins enraptured him as much as anything else.

Len didn’t mind. He enjoyed the light graze of a thumb down his jugular, while a talented tongue flitted at his leaking tip, and two firm fingers thrust inside him, finally becoming the start of three and making Len cry out enough to echo over the rocks.

“Are you ready for me, my love?” Barry asked, so unfairly even-voiced, for how Len was wheezing.

“Yes,” Len pleaded, locking eyes with Barry, emerald green and breathtaking. “Bring me back to you.”

The appeal seemed to touch something in Barry that triggered the pinnacle of his passions, and he removed his fingers to align his hips. His tip was searing hot and dripping wet as it pushed inside Len, smooth and making Len fuller than he ever thought possible. Whenever he thought the stretch might be too much, bordering on painful, the discomfort would ease, replaced with searing satisfaction, until his mouth fell open in a silent scream.

Barry pulled back and thrust forward again, bringing him deeper, and making Len’s insides burn in want of more.

“ _More_ ,” he pleaded aloud, and Barry obliged, thrusting harder and faster until they found a rhythm.

The smoothness of the rock meant it wasn’t as uncomfortable as Len might have feared, but it was still hard stone beneath him. Barry must have noticed him grimace, for he grabbed Len by his lower back and lifted him right off the ground.

The show of strength was as hot as their connection, Barry brought in even deeper at that angle, and rendering Len incapable of spouting anything more than whines and gasps for breath. It made every part of Len feel like it had ignited, bathed in sunlight without any of the pain. He dropped his head back in ecstasy and still didn’t touch the stone, Barry had him so wholly supported.

The desire for more still gripped Len, and he strained his stomach muscles to sit up, squashing his length between them as Barry continued to thrust, grabbed both sides of Barry’s face as Barry had done to him in the bath, and kissed him.

For the first time, Len felt Barry stutter in his rhythm. They slowed, almost stilled, to allow their tongues to entwine, and when they parted, Barry breathed a quiet, “I love you. I’ve missed you.”

“Me too.” Len shuddered. “I love you. I _love_ you.” He kissed Barry again, fiercer and claiming, like he wanted to bruise Barry’s lips to mark him as his.

Barry bucked into him, and Len’s head fell back like before. Barry had him lifted, no threat of dropping him given his superior strength, but Len still gripped Barry’s back for support, and then lower, lower, until he felt the firm mounds of Barry’s backside and squeezed.

Barry moaned, the insistency in Len’s act urging him to thrust harder.

Even without direct contact on Len’s cock, the slide of it pressed between their stomachs combined with the building heat of Barry inside him, had Len certain he would not last much longer. He could feel the precipice nearing, that marvelous build of tingling heat, so much stronger than any touch of his own hand, or that even Barry’s mouth or hands on him could compare to.

This, finally, was what Len had always wanted— _love_ , unconditionally given.

He choked back a cry as his release built, awaiting that glorious climax, when Barry swung his head down to sink his fangs into Len’s neck. It didn’t hurt. To the contrary, it caused an even louder cry from Len’s lips and spiked his end to such a massive crescendo, his vision went black as he spilled.

In the moments that followed, Len was limp, completely at Barry’s mercy to hold him up, and Barry did, still fucking into him, until he too, spilled, and Len felt the added warmth fill him.

Afterward, Barry still drank, and Len surrendered to it without fighting, enjoying the aftershocks, as well as the glow of the crystal Barry wore, the gem holding the last of Len’s memories as Leonard.

_Just a little farther, Leonard thought. He could see the gates. He had already urged the refugees he’d saved to go ahead of him. They were long since through, and it was only Leonard left, guarding the rear, who had to keep on._

_Bartholomew was probably waiting for him inside, his sweet Barry, his intense, passionate love, who would fell mountains for Leonard’s sake._

_What Leonard loved most about him though was his kindness toward others, especially those persecuted, when no one else had the heart to care._

_Bartholomew loved Leonard, a human loved a darkling, and disaster hadn’t resulted from their union yet._

_“Halt!” Leonard heard just before he dodged the zip of an arrow, then another, then—ah, one struck him, square in the spine, and he fell, so close to the gates that he could see how they remained propped open, waiting for him to cross into safety._

_All too soon, an unfamiliar face wrenched Leonard’s head up by his short white hair, sneering down at him, and then the man held an axe to Leonard’s throat._

_“You’re his dirty darkling lover, aren’t you? Then you’ll make a fine trophy to hurl at his feet for defying the laws of the Prime Kingdom.”_

_No, Leonard thought, not for his own life, but for how Bartholomew would surely shake the heavens in his wrath._

And so, Bartholomew did. He still _was_. Len could see it through the connection between them as the crystal finished its transfer at last and its light dimmed.

Bartholomew pulled up from feeding on Len to offer him the last of the blood needed to turn him, but what had connected them in Len’s dreams, what connected them now, went both ways, and Len could see what Bartholomew had planned once this was over.

And it was full of blood and vengeance.

He shoved Bartholomew away, scrambling to his feet to lurch toward his belongings, unsteady but determined.

“My love, what are you doing?” Bartholomew called after him.

“You’re lying.” Len hurried to put his trousers and robes back on—and his amulet, without tucking it away this time.

“I’m not lying.” Bartholomew followed him. “I will spare whomever you wish. Just not the Prime Kingdom itself. They must pay for what they did to us and what they continue to do to others. And your friends merely need to join us, join our horde, or they will never stop trying to defeat me.”

“That is not what you promised.” Len whirled on Bartholomew, fumbling to secure his belt.

“But it is. I said no more death… _here_ , and there won’t be.” Bartholomew reached for Len, still so beautiful, naked and slick with water and sweat—and the stains of their releases that Len could feel on his skin too. “I love you—”

“And I loved you.” Len staggered out of his reach. “Once. But you’re not Barry.”

Without waiting for Bartholomew’s response, Len turned and sprinted back the way they had come from. He knew he only managed to get away because Bartholomew let him go. Bartholomew could be dressed and give pursuit in a blink, so Len took advantage of the quarter he’d been given and rushed back to find his friends.

He remembered everything, crystal clear as if it had all happened yesterday instead of just vague dreams—even how it had felt when that axe removed his head.

It wasn’t pain or fear for himself that Len recalled, but fear of what Bartholomew would do, because he knew the darkness in his love, he had simply always hoped that the goodness they brought out in each other, that was already there, would outweigh any darkness buried deep and ready to rage as hotly as their passions could.

Len blew past the school and reached the more populous areas of the city in minutes, fueled by purpose to combat his weakness, but he didn’t know this place well enough to remember which abode he had woken up in, let alone where the others might be.

“My friends.” Len grabbed the nearest passing dwarf. “Where are they?”

“Uhh…”

“The strangers who arrived last night! Where are they?!”

“I… I believe some are resting after their baths.”

“ _Where_?”

Len sprinted toward the abode the dwarf pointed at, not bothering to call out any warnings or greeting as he entered. This was definitely a place to rest, with multiple cots setup and many of Zari’s people napping, but a mist seemed to hover over everyone, flowing out of them, translucent the way light could catch a spray of water.

The people were all so still, still breathing, but shallowly, which Len might have dismissed given all they had been through, but this was clearly magic.

Len tore through the building, between cots and around pillars of rock, seeking out his friends. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing when he found them, for Mick, Nate, and Zari were at the very back, being tended to by healers—only they didn’t seem to be healing anything, instead hunched over the others’ prone bodies, sucking up the flowing mist into their open maws.

And they were maws, not mouths, betraying rows upon rows of sharpened teeth with long pointed noses and curved ears, none of which anyone in the city had had before, Len was certain, because one of the creatures was the dwarven shaman from before.

“ _Light_!” Len threw at a hanging rock formation above them that lit up the back area almost as bright as the day.

They shrieked and scurried from him like rats. Foul creatures, hungry for the energy of a person’s very soul and rendering their victims powerless in their beds. Now, Len remembered. No wonder the people here had a plague afflicting them.

Their shaman were Night Hags.

“Wake up!” Len shook Nate first. The mist had faded, back into the victims’ bodies as the hags fled. He saw Nate’s eyes flutter, and breathed relief, though Len also wavered on his feet, dangerously weak.

He had to stop relying on abilities that pulled from his inner energy and remember how Leonard used to fight—with wits and whatever weapons he could find.

“Get up! We’re leaving.” Len hefted Nate out of the cot as soon as he looked conscious.

“Wha…?”

“Bartholomew is here. Now. We have to go. Mick!” Len Shook Mick next, who roused more swiftly.

“Whadda yer trousers on fire for?”

“Bartholomew. _Move_.”

Those were the only words needed to get Mick to his feet. He and Nate both had their belongings nearby, gathering it up to replace on their persons, but Len’s crossbow had been left where he woke up. He’d have to do without.

Zari rose before Len could touch her, from the ruckus or just more time without her essence being drained. “What’s happening? Bartholomew, you said? But there were no brides…” She felt at her neck, as if assuming loss of blood was to blame for her weakness.

“Night Hags,” Len told them, all acquainted with such creatures, judging by the widening of their eyes.

“That’s why the symptoms sounded familiar!” Nate cried.

“Yes.” Len wouldn’t have known what one was, but Leonard did. “No telling who else in the settlement might be one. Rouse your people and go.” He turned to Zari. “We’ll continue through the mountains.”

She nodded, but then stepped closer to Len, as if mesmerized by something in his gaze. “Your eyes, they’re older. Wiser. Your memories?”

“Clear now.”

“Then I suppose I should mention that the reason I know the story of Lorna so well, your mother, is not only because it was passed down with our faith. It was passed down through family.”

Len felt a shiver run through him as he realized what she meant, and with his memories stronger, he could see it, the resemblance, however diluted through generations.

“You had children?” Mick balked.

“But you were with Bartholomew,” Nate added.

“I had a sister,” Len said, recalling her now, very much like Zari, strong and capable. “Lisa.”

“She thrived after mourning your loss,” Zari said. “A thousand years, and our family still roams free. I’m sorry I nearly struck you down before, but I feared the worst, knowing you had fed from Bartholomew. I am the last direct descendant of our family, though hopefully not last forever.”

Len thought perhaps she would slide her eyes to a likely candidate, but she avoided the temptation.

“I would like to tell you what became of your sister,” Zari continued. “So please, succeed in your mission that one day I might.”

At that, Zari turned to go after offering an affirming nod to Mick, and a lingering glance at Nate.

The others each then turned to Len, looking as though they too could see the change in his eyes.

“Let’s go,” Len said. “Even if we have to carry Ray, there’s no time to waste.”

The streets were too quiet when they got outside, but Len ignored whatever that might mean and hurried to recover Ray. He expected to find Nora hovered over Ray’s body, but that abode was quiet too, Ray unconscious but breathing, left alone.

Ray took some time to rouse, but once he did, little needed to be said for him to agree it was time to leave. Mick aided him with Ray’s arm thrown over his shoulder, and while Nate carried Ray’s sword and shield, Len claimed his bow.

“What about Guardian?” Ray asked. “Someone came to give him food and water.”

It pained Len to say so, but, “We don’t have time to look for him. He’ll find us.”

The streets were quieter still as they left, not a soul anywhere, other than Zari’s people starting to head out. Len and the others dared not break the silence by calling for safe travels, and merely gave parting waves.

Len knew Bartholomew was biding his time, some trap waiting to be sprung, but they could do little more than push on, past the school, past the springs, where Len almost expected Bartholomew to be sitting, naked at the pool’s edge.

He wasn’t, but as they passed, Len stared at it in longing, and at the spot where they had made love.

One thing was sure, Len felt clearer, more confident, like he had faced insurmountable odds, because he had. As Leonard. The hesitations he used to feel were gone. He was an experienced adventurer who had defied death and consequence time and time again—until he hadn’t.

Even so, when the axe failed to drop, as it were, he wondered what horrors Bartholomew had in store for them.

“We have to rest,” Nate said after what felt like hours.

There were no crystals anymore, only darkness. There were many smaller winding paths, but only one large one heading out, and Len knew it well from his past life.

“Ray looks positively green,” Nate continued, “and I’m exhausted. Those hags did a number on us.”

“We can’t stop long,” Len said but agreed.

Mick leaned Ray against the rock wall, and they all sat to eat and drink. A quick spell from Nate deemed the provisions they had acquired from the settlement as safe, and so they took nourishment, all still at half strength, even after they’d finished, and Ray with drooping eyes.

“We’re a sorry lot,” Ray said with a smile. “Do you think… the only reason we’ve made it this far… is because he knows we’re no match for him?”

“We have to try,” Len said.

“To what?” asked Mick. “Kill him or save him? I know my preference.” He wrung his hangs along the shaft of his axe. “You have to choose. I know that’s not what you want—”

“I know. I know what we have to do. I’ll end this, we just need to get to the castle.” Len didn’t elaborate, but his friends nodded in solidarity.

“My tongue feels fuzzy,” Ray said with a loll of his head.

“Have more water,” Nate offered.

“Here, let me—” but before Len could reach to touch Ray and heal him, Nate snatched up his hand and shook his head.

“We can’t waste strength—especially not yours. Unless it’s life or death, best to save everything you have.”

Len hated to admit that was true.

“Stop tapping your foot,” Ray huffed at Mick after downing more water. “Or is it your fingers? It’s grating.”

Mick stared at his hands, and then at his very still feet. “I’m not tapping.”

“Then what’s that skittering sound…?”

They jumped to their feet, all save Ray, who used the wall to brace himself and stand more slowly.

Nate kept close eye on their surroundings as he started to gather up what little they’d unpacked.

Mick hefted his axe.

Len nocked an arrow.

Eyes, red eyes, dozens of them, started to glow out of the dark. At first, Len feared they were more of the beasts from outside, but then one of them skittered into clearer view.

“Cave spiders!” Mick hissed.

“Ray, can you run?” Len asked, as the rest of them tightened their formation closer to Ray.

“I won’t make it. Leave me.”

“Like hells,” Mick growled and threw his axe to the ground to heft Ray over his shoulder.

“Run!” Nate called, as the spiders took that as their cue to pounce, and they took off running as fast as their tired feet could carry them.

Mick lagged behind, but his strength and determination aided him, enough that he was able to take one of the fire bottles from his belt and toss it blindly behind him.

Len risked a glance back, watching it explode and spread, causing several of the spiders to screech in pain as they were engulfed, but still, there were more, as fast as the beasts had been, though in place of rows of fangs were two, dripping poison.

“We’re almost free!” Nate called, and indeed, an opening out of the mountain appeared not far ahead. Len knew they had been close, and if they could just make it out, he also knew that cave spiders hated to leave their homes.

Every one of his muscles ached, and he knew it was the same for the others, being pushed so hard, when they had so little reserves in them, the brief rest of food and drink the only reason they managed to sprint as fast and hard as they did.

Surely, Nate would be searching for a spell, or at least hurling a fireball if he had the strength, but even he remained silent and ran. Len too, though he kept glancing back to be sure Mick was on his heels, didn’t dare waste a spell or the one arrow he had ready unless he had to. They just needed to reach the exit.

They were close, Len could almost taste the sweeter air from outside, when one final glance back showed a spider launching itself from the rocky wall at Mick and Ray.

Len fired, his arrow striking it square between the eyes, and it fell without a squeal.

Almost there.

So close!

Nate crested the archway of the exit, and Len was right behind him. Len whirled around, just in time to see another spider leap to grab Mick and Ray and pull them back into the cave, but Len didn’t have another arrow ready, not enough time to nock one, though still he tried—only for a black figure to slam into the spider and slam it to the ground right out of the air.

Mick made it, winded though he may be, and as the four of them panted together, a couple meters clear of the cave, they watched, fearful of any spiders following, but what emerged was the black figure that had saved Mick and Ray.

Guardian!

He trotted triumphantly up to Len and licked his hand.

“Never doubted you, friend,” Ray said from Mick’s shoulder.

Mick put him down, and they all took a moment to breathe relief. They were free, and on this side of the mountain, Len remembered what a different world it was with a breathtaking view.

He turned to take it in, remembering it clearly even before he saw it. The rolling hills, a field of flowers to their right, purple like the amethyst crystals at the settlement, and the river to the left that led to the waterfall and its sparkle like diamonds, even more brilliant than stars.

It was day now, what Nightfall had for day, but still the view was beautiful—even the looming castle at the top of the hill beside the waterfall that looked out over it all.

Len felt another lick at his palm and looked down with a smile at Guardian, who was sticking closer to him than Ray or any of the others. Guardian trotted around him, as if he too wanted to look at the castle.

“Guardian?” Ray said, but when Len turned, Ray wasn’t looking at the wolf beside Len, but at the mouth of the mountains.

Where another black wolf was trotting out of the dark.

The new wolf didn’t quite reach them, before Ray, Nate, and Mick, all doubled over in pain.

Mick clutched the bite on his arm from the first wolf in the woods.

Nate clutched the side of his neck where the bride had fed.

Ray clutched his throat, as if inside his mouth and down past his tongue where a Night Hag might have drained him was what ailed him now.

Len was such a fool. Of course they had been allowed to leave after Nora ‘treated’ them. The others needed time for their transformations to complete, held at bay before by who knows what magic, for this very moment.

Mick howled as the change into a werewolf took him, fur spouting as though his skin tore from his body, and he was elongated into a monstrous beast.

Nate hissed and snarled as his eyes flashed red, fangs growing from his eyeteeth, and he looked around as though filled with a terrible hunger.

Ray’s cry was more like a squeal of wind, as razor teeth filled his maw and he twisted into an almost transparent creature that could devour a person’s soul.

What else would a creature made of mist be, if not a Night Hag?

Worse was there didn’t seem to be any sense of themselves when they turned to Len. Guardian didn’t look friendly either, eyes glowing red, going to Ray’s side, all of them forming into a terrifying line.

But _that_ was Guardian, the real Guardian, because the wolf behind Len was someone else.

“Come, my love.” Bartholomew’s arms encircled Len from behind, causing him to drop Ray’s bow.

Immediately, they lifted, Len’s changed companions left behind on the ground, with the sound of flapping filling the air and all hope draining from Len’s heart.

“It is time we ended this.”

TBC...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter left. ^_^ And yes, I assume it will be another long one.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, um... first, sorry for the huge delay with this final chapter, but besides finishing a bunch of edits for my publisher, I have been working on getting me house ready to sell to get a better place, and it's been an insane several weeks. 
> 
> However... this is the end, and I'm really happy with it. I hope you are too.

A warm hand trailed slowly across Len’s neck and down his naked body. The bed beneath him felt plush, familiar.

Then a second hand joined the first.

Then a third.

Then _more_ , some smaller or larger or rougher or smoother than the others, but as Len roused, the hands were everywhere.

He awoke with a shudder, but the hands on him were no dream or illusion. Len was on the bed _from_ his dreams, Bartholomew and Leonard’s bed from years past, though Bartholomew himself was not among those with Len, touching him as though he were some specimen under their scrutiny.

The brides—all five of them—were on the bed, not dressed in their minstrel clothes from before, but in sheer flowing nightgowns for the women, and long loincloths in similar fabric for the men, each their own color.

Iris, the dark elf, was in purple. Her high elf husband, Eddie, was in sunset orange. Wally, Iris’s brother, was in deep burgundy. Cisco, the gnome, was in goldenrod yellow. And Caitlin, the dwarf, was in icy blue.

All of it was very… see-through.

Len tried to reach for a weapon, only to remember he was naked, striped of everything, including his amulet and the bag of his own ashen bones.

Leonard’s bones.

With a furious cry at the surge of confidence his former self granted him, Len tried to throw the brides off him, but they were too strong, too many. They were barely nudged and clung to his legs and arms and chest all the more possessively, while tittering with laughter.

“Calm yourself,” Iris said, closest against him, trailing sharp, deep-purple nails down Len’s chest. Her dark eyes captured his gaze and seemed to glow violet, rendering him awestruck.

 _Literally_ awestruck, Len recalled from his time as Leonard, because the different races as vampires had different specialties, and dark elves could render their victims completely immobile with a look.

Len relaxed into the bed against his will.

“We were simply meant to rouse you,” Wally said, down by Len’s feet with firm hands on Len’s ankles that kept sliding higher, like he might slither right up between Len’s thighs. “But oh, we would do much more if we were allowed.”

“Like drain you dry.” Cisco laughed, beside Iris further down Len’s legs, but it was a shrill piercing laugh that made Len wince, a trait of gnome vampires that made their hideous laughter cause victims physical pain.

“Hush,” Eddie chided, across from Iris at Len’s left. “Do you want Leonard’s wrath once he is our lord?”

It was an almost comfort that the high elf, capable of trailing death and decay in his touch, was sensible, though Len’s fate of becoming their _lord_ was not.

“I can’t see why Bartholomew favors him,” Caitlin sneered, across from Cisco. Where Wally teased that he would trail up Len’s thigh, Caitlin ran a hand there boldly, high up between his legs, with a pressure in her touch that made Len tired and weak—the dwarven vampire power.

Against all five, no one could fight such monsters alone.

“Love is love,” Iris said, smiling at her husband, though within that smile was a hint of her fangs. “I suppose we aren’t meant to understand. But I trust Bartholomew.” Her eyes returned to Len with another violet flash, and once more, he felt enthralled, unable to do anything but stare at her. “I am sure you will be magnificent. Remember our loyalty when you submit to our master.”

“I-I…” Len managed to choke, “will not… submit. I will not drink from him again!”

They laughed, and again, Cisco’s made Len wince.

“We will be loyal,” Wally said, parting Len’s legs only slightly, which made Len shiver to his core, because he honestly didn’t know what loyalty meant to them. “I do so hope we will be granted our masters’ pleasure someday. Both, if allowed. I have missed Bartholomew’s touch.”

Len scowled, but what else had he expected? These were Bartholomew’s _brides,_ after all.

“Who do you think kept his bed warm while he waited for you?” Caitlin said, scratching her nails down Len’s thigh.

“But as soon as you were born,” Eddie added, “he sent us away, wanted you, to be pure and untouched only for you.”

“Since I was born…” Len repeated. “He only came to me in my dreams once I reached manhood. And he only touched me after I asked.”

“Of course,” Iris said. “He saved himself for you the moment you reentered this world, but he waited until you were ready, nearly sixteen years celibate in his pining. It was torture for us, to be denied our master, but watching him with you has been… inspiring.”

_Watching?_

“You will give in to him, like you have so many times before.” Iris pressed her body closer and bent to kiss Len’s cheek.

In that same moment, the others pressed closer too, their touches more insistent, winding around Len intimately, possessively, until all at once they were gone.

Len gulped at the sudden rush of cold as the brides slithered from the bed with unnatural grace.

“You have been washed already,” Iris said. “Come down once you are dressed.”

The weakness and press of captivating power left Len, and though he shivered harder, he was able to sit up, as the brides exited through a door that remained unlocked. Len wasn’t a prisoner, yet he was, he knew, because where could he go but where Bartholomew expected him to?

Len had no friends to call upon. The last time he’d seen them, even Guardian had looked menacing, but worse was seeing Mick as a werewolf, Nate a vampire spawn, and Ray a Night Hag, all under Bartholomew’s control.

The memories of that fading sight when Bartholomew lifted Len into the air on monstrous wings made him feel like his smallest self, and he huddled into a ball on the bed, hugging his knees. Wetness pooled at the corners of his eyes, but it wasn’t only his past self strengthening him that made him fight the tears threatening to fall. Even as just Len, he was far stronger than he’d been when he left the temple.

Sniffing back his tears, Len rose from the bed. He remembered which wardrobe held Leonard’s clothes, and they proved to have been kept pristine. Len was able to choose an old favorite—a navy and black doublet with silver trim, more the garb of a rogue than a priest.

There was nothing to arm himself with, no sign of his weapons belt, the bag of bone dust, his amulet, or anything else that might be of use in a fight, but there was food and drink, so Len ate his fill. He couldn’t be sure what time it was, but outside the window was a glittering night sky, not the haze of diminished day.

He’d had several hours rest, he imagined, and he felt better than how exhausted he’d been while escaping the mountain village, but he knew he wasn’t in top form. He’d been drained of too much blood without taking more in return.

All he had to defend himself with was his wits and the hope that he could call upon his prayers with enough impact even without his amulet.

There was a mirror, and Len stood before it to brush out his long white hair and tie it back. If he had a dagger or a sword, he wondered if he would want to sheer it off, but no. He was Leonard, he had been Leonard, but he was Len now too, and that was who he wanted to be—the sum of his parts, but still mostly the man he had been born in this life.

Behind him, in the mirror, he could see the window with its breathtaking view. Len turned to look at the landscape, and it was just as stunning as in his dreams, just as beautiful as he remembered from his past.

Like Bartholomew.

Like _Barry_.

Beautiful, but merely a reflection, a memory.

Len left. He knew the castle so well, he didn’t have to guess where Bartholomew would be waiting. There was a grand banquet hall down the long staircase from the tower with a throne befitting of a lord, and indeed, that was where Len found Bartholomew.

Along with the brides, in their tantalizing finery.

And Nora with her two Night Hag sisters, no longer hiding themselves with a glamour but true hags, like trolls with sharp teeth.

And finally, Len’s friends, transformed into monsters, with Guardian dutifully sitting beside Ray. Though Ray was almost like a shade, and Mick a fully realized werewolf, they still had their weapons about them, and Nate carried his bag of books. They seemed hypnotized, not even looking at Len as he entered.

“Come, my love,” Bartholomew said, in his kingly red and black, standing up by his throne and gesturing to the empty banquet table. “We will have a feast to celebrate our reunion. Once I have turned you, we have volunteers as you requested that you may feed upon. Although I do wonder if you will change your mind about no killing once you have seen who else I have to offer.”

Len paused at the end of the table, the long expanse of it separating him from Bartholomew by his throne, with the brides at Len’s right, and the hags and Len’s friends at his left.

From the room behind the throne, which Len recalled was a hall both to the kitchens and to a passage leading outside the castle, there was a ruckus of voices and struggling.

“You assumed I sent my horde to find you,” Bartholomew continued. “You assumed that was why they wreaked havoc upon Central City. But I knew you would find your own way here. No, I was looking for someone else, my love. A few someone’s, in fact, though the king of this age would have been a better prize.”

John and his wife, Lyla, appeared from behind the throne, not transformed into werewolves, though Len knew them both to be such now, but roughly carting two men bound in shackles.

Father Lewis and Lord Darhk.

“They conspired against you. They all did,” Bartholomew said with a flash of his eyes glowing red and his fangs glinting, as he descended to the head of the table. “They brought you back not so we could be together, but so they could train you to destroy me. And what do you think they would have done if you’d been the victor? Thrown you a parade? Decorated you as a hero? No.”

Bartholomew beckoned Len forward, and Len was transfixed by the sight of these men who he’d once feared for all the power they held over him. He couldn’t look away from how tattered and weak they seemed.

Len headed left around the table to pass his friends, but his eyes remained on Father Lewis.

“That’s right. They would have killed you, said good riddance, and razed every square league of my lands and the people in it. You think me a monster, my love, but aren’t they the true monsters for what they did to us?”

Len kept his expression neutral as he walked up to Father Lewis in John’s arms.

Lewis snarled and spat at Len’s feet.

“I knew you would fail us,” he sneered. “Go on then. Kill me. Kill us both. Let your master tear our throats out, or perhaps you’d prefer to do it yourself. Prove you are exactly what we always feared.”

All Len could do was laugh, however hysterically, because he was having his trials all over again. 

“The three tenets of the Sun God faith,” Len recited. “‘Protect the innocent even at risk of bodily harm,’ which I have strived to do every chance I could and always will. ‘When questioned by heresy, know the words to volley back.’ Honestly, I don’t know what I believe anymore. Maybe the gods are real. Maybe they are watching. Maybe they were a dark elf, a high elf, and a human once when the world was young, and all they might have hoped to leave behind was corrupted.

“Finally, ‘Be ready to end an evil life, even if they plead, for any mercy they deserve will be granted after death.’” Len let his expression turn cold on this last lesson, and he saw Father Lewis tremble, just a man in the end.

Darhk struggled in Lyla’s hold, pleading, “Spare me! I did only as commanded—”

“Silence!” Lyla hushed him, one hand transforming into claws and squeezing his throat with the threat of a sharp talon on his jugular.

It was vindicating to see these man brought low, but that was not Len’s goal.

“Despite all that, the Lord of Law has words of wisdom that I always thought contradicted the rest, yet these I believe. ‘Words save no one, only the light of one’s true heart.’” Len looked to Bartholomew, who smiled like he knew what Len would do next. “My heart knows what’s true.”

Len looked back to Lewis.

“You don't realize the irony, do you? I failed the trials because I wouldn't kill someone who had done terrible things but who believed in what they were doing and wanted mercy. Your own faith demands that I kill you, yet you can't even see that you are as much a villain as anyone else here.

“I hate to disappoint you, Father, but I am never going to pass the third trial.” Again, Len looked to Bartholomew. “Spare them.”

“What?” Bartholomew startled, eyes dimming to their human green. “You would show mercy? Even to _him_ , of all people?”

“I would show anyone mercy, because I know what a rare and beautiful thing it is for someone to show it to me.” At that, Len looked behind him at his friends, and he thought perhaps, their eyes looked a little clearer.

“Leonard.” Bartholomew traversed the few remaining steps that separated them and reached to gently cup Len’s face, letting his fingers trail further downward until they brushed along Len’s scar. “Look what they did to you.”

There was a part of Len, looking at Bartholomew and seeing his sorrow beneath the vicious need for vengeance, that thought instead—Look what they did to _you_ —but he knew, as guilty as the people of Central City had once been and still were oftentimes, Bartholomew made this monster of himself.

“I love you,” Len said, taking Bartholomew’s hand from his neck and pulling it down between them. “I know you think you are gifting this to me, that you are doing this all for me, for us, so that we can be together as we should have been allowed to be all those years ago. But this is wrong. This is not what I want.”

Bartholomew looked wounded, with a snarl curling his lips as he barked, “You would choose your god, who shunned us?”

“No.” Len squeezed Bartholomew’s hand still in his grasp. “I said just now that I don’t know if I believe in the gods anymore. Some magic comes from within us, some without, but I can’t say with certainty the source of mine. Maybe it is simply belief in me. Belief in those I care about.”

Turning again to glance behind him, Len took in his friends, who he was almost certain now were blinking awareness, despite their corrupted forms.

Bolstered by that shred of clarity, Len returned to Bartholomew and brought their hands up to press a kiss into Bartholomew’s palm, trying to convey that who he cared about was right in front of him too.

It almost seemed enough, the anger fading to only sorrow and a deep longing, like maybe Bartholomew could come to understand.

“Fiends!” Lord Darhk cried, breaking from Lyla’s hold with a desperate dash toward Bartholomew and the decorative sword at his belt— _decorative_ because he hardly needed such a weapon when he was a weapon himself.

Bartholomew had the man by the throat before Darhk could even begin to draw Bartholomew’s sword against him. Then Bartholomew was sinking his teeth into that throat, tearing into it furiously like a mad beast, not to drink, not really, but to rend.

Lewis looked horrified, knowing he was next.

“You see.” Bartholomew’s mouth and much of his clothing was coated in red when he finally let a twitching, dying Lord Darhk drop with a heavy thud. “You try to show mercy and they still attempt to destroy us. But they will be no match for you, my love, as they are no match for me, once you are my equal.”

Bartholomew stalked forward, fangs glinting and intent clear. All Len could do was stumble away, for no one was on his side, much as his friends might have been trying to reclaim themselves.

Len couldn’t fight them all. If Bartholomew refused to see reason, then Len was doomed.

“A hopeless cause requires assistance. Wouldn’t you agree, cousin?”

Len spun, not sure he could believe that voice belonged to who he thought until he saw Zari standing at the mouth of the hall, with several of her people, weapons raised, filing in behind her.

“We barely got a few leagues before we turned back,” she added with a smile.

“You dare trespass!?” Bartholomew roared. “After I spared your family all these years!”

Zari didn’t look surprised to hear that her people’s survival might have more to do with her lineage to Leonard’s sister than to any prayers to the gods.

Len couldn’t be sure either, though it certainly seemed like divine intervention when Mick and Ray readied their weapons and Nate’s hands began to glow—as they turned toward Nora and her hags.

Guardian leapt at Nora, and the hall erupted.

Zari’s people rushed the brides, who shed their beauty for monstrous, winged forms instead with the ease of shifting an expression.

John threw Father Lewis to the floor, as he and Lyla shifted in kind, their clothing seeming to vanish as they became a hulking black and silver werewolf respectively, bounding to intercept Zari.

As Len’s friends tried to engage the hags, only Ray proved capable of touching them, Guardian having been shaken off with ease, and the others’ swings and spells landed on nothing, for the hags were mostly translucent.

But then, so was Ray.

“I knew you liked me,” Ray said in a wisp of a voice, more himself as he regained control. His sword became translucent too, which sliced into Nora’s shoulder with a sizzle. “Why else make me one of you?”

“Because you were the only one left, you fool!” Nora howled.

“Stop!” Bartholomew’s bellow swung Len’s attention back to him and the looming peril Bartholomew presented, for he too was a terrifying fiend, fangs elongating and wings sprouting from his back like the brides.

No one heeded him, but when his focus returned to Len, his primary goal of seizing Len at all costs was clear.

Bartholomew leapt with the same ferocity as Guardian, but just as Bartholomew’s feet left the ground, he was yanked back down with a force that shook the hall, a bright glowing runic trap having formed beneath his feet.

Len turned sharply to see Nate with a grin around his vampire fangs and an outstretched hand.

“ _Crossbow_ ,” Nate said at the end of a long muttering of Magic Tongue, and the lightest weapon Len had ever held appeared in his grasp, glowing faintly like a mirage.

“Enough!” Bartholomew slammed his hands against an invisible barrier. The runes flickered but held, and Bartholomew’s mouth seemed too wide in his fury, like a great mad gargoyle that could lay waste to everything in his path.

The trap wouldn’t hold him long.

Len took quick stock of the progressing fight. The brides were gargoyles as well, and worse, Eddie had one of Zari’s people, already draining her, and from his bite and everywhere on the woman’s body where he touched spread the decay he could inflict as an elven vampire, rotting away in a sickly gray and green that made her scream in agony.

Len fired, striking Eddie with a glowing crossbow bolt in the shoulder that made him hiss and release his victim to the floor. Len could only imagine if she could be healed, but Zari dropped down to try.

“Control your spawn!” Bartholomew roared, slamming on the barrier again with another flicker of the runes.

Nate was trying to hold his concentration on the spell to imprison Bartholomew for as long as possible, but he was also firing off additional spells to aid the others. Now, as Wally, the bride who had turned him, broke from the fight to move toward Nate, the barest command of “ _Obey_ ” caused Nate to falter.

Lyla must have been the wolf who bit Mick, because she did the same, and Mick stumbled mid-swing of his axe.

“Be a good boy, and you _will_ be one of us,” Nora coaxed Ray, raising her uninjured arm to cup Ray’s cheek in a ghostly grip, and what sense of self had been in him vanished.

Len stood frozen amid the chaos. Such creatures were bound to their makers, and yet, Len’s friends had been able to resist.

They could again. They had to.

They had to before Bartholomew broke free and slaughtered them all!

“ _Resist_ ,” Len prayed to whatever god might listen, to whatever part of himself channeled the most power form whatever source and harnessed that outward through sheer will.

Ray swatted Nora’s hand away and raised his sword to attack—only for Nora to grab one of her sisters and throw her into the path of Ray’s blade, nearly slicing her in two.

Mick wailed with a werewolf’s howl, his fur a deep, beautiful reddish brown, and his claws monstrous around the handle of his axe as he shifted his focus from the hags to his creator.

And Nate, with a brief shake of his head, kept his attention on the trap still holding Bartholomew captive.

It was in those salvaged moments that Len caught a glint of light out of the corner of his eye at a small table against the far wall—where his _amulet_ sat, fading from its recent glow, along with Len’s belt and the pouch of dust.

Bartholomew hadn’t destroyed it.

“No!” Bartholomew cried, when Len raced toward the treasure, even more desperately trying to break the trap.

But before Len could move even a few strides, Wally was there, furious and snarling at Len for having broken the thrall over his spawn.

“ _Sunlight_.” Len let the crossbow dangle as he shot out his free hand without falter.

At last, the elusive spell flashed true, and the death knell as the bride burst into flames and then disintegrated was terrible, but Len didn’t pause to feel pity.

Iris screamed for the loss of her brother and turned from fighting Zari’s people to hurl herself in Len’s path next, just as a confused handful of people poured in from the room behind the throne. Len halted once more, recognizing some of them from the first village.

 _Volunteers_ , Bartholomew had said, for Len to feed upon. The thought made Len shudder, and he wondered what these loyal subjects of Bartholomew’s would do. They were clearly startled to find fighting, even more so to see their lord bested and trapped, with some of his monsters already dead.

A woman stepped forward, the blacksmith, Len recalled, with a sword on her belt, along with a vial of glowing orange.

Alchemist fire!

When she pulled the vial free, Len feared she’d hurl it into the melee, possibly at Len’s friends, but instead, she poured some along her blade, causing it to ignite, and then hurled the remainder at Iris.

A similar end met the sister as the brother—flames and then ashes—saving Len before he’d even needed aid.

They’d chosen him.

“Now we’re talking!” Mick growled, and while in his wolf form, he had no clothes, he had his belt, and on it were several vials of his own. He coated his axe as the blacksmith had her sword, turning it aflame, and then continuing toward Lyla and John.

But the werewolf couple looked less eager to join the fight, seeing some of their own people changing sides. Guardian had turned toward them as well, hackles raised and teeth bared, and Ray had already felled another hag while hunting Nora.

Still, this didn’t need to end in more death.

“Please,” Len beseeched the werewolves, remembering their young children. He held their gaze only long enough to see them share a look, before they chose to join their people too, much to Bartholomew’s fury.

Len had to reach the ashes, but his path kept getting blocked.

Zari’s people, with aid from the villagers, were finishing off Eddie, his struggle ending with a swipe of the blacksmith’s flaming sword removing his head, but several others were down, and Zari herself had the remaining two brides surrounding her. Cisco’s hideous laughter was causing Zari too much pain, and Caitlin’s swipes and faint touches were weakening her.

Then John and Lyla roared, racing to Zari’s aid, with Mick and Guardian hot on their haunches.

The din made the brides look back at what descended on them, and though weakened, the reprieve gave Zari the chance she needed to summon forth a wave of fire. It wasn’t enough to incinerate the brides, but they were badly burned and left howling—enough for John and Lyla to get in swipes of their claws that nearly tore the brides’ throats out in a single strike, and then for Guardian to leap at Cisco and finish the job, while Caitlin tried to run, right into the path of Mick’s axe.

The way was clear for Len, and he took off sprinting.

Then, just as he made it, hand closing around the pouch with the remaining ashes, he heard Nate holler, “Look out!” all too late.

“Mine! You are mine!” Bartholomew’s voice preceded him flipping Len around and pressing him into the table. The runes had failed, and Bartholomew was a powerhouse atop Len. “You will drink from me. You _will_ be with me!”

Even now, with nearly all his best warriors slain or turned against him, that was all Bartholomew wanted, but the only thing Len could feel in reply was a deep sorrow held in the centuries that separated them and that made Bartholomew this.

“You would imprison me,” Len said plainly, soft between them, “take choice away from me, like the king who first tore me from you, like that lord who acted out of fear, like the cruel priest who raised me? Why?”

Bartholomew’s monstrous visage couldn’t hide how his glowing eyes filled with moisture. “How else would you choose me now? I am everything they say, everything you accuse me of. A mad monster.”

Len dropped the crossbow, which vanished without his hold, and reached to grasp one of Bartholomew’s wrists, his hands twisted in Len’s doublet but loosening. “That is your choice too. Don’t let them be right, that we are cursed because of who and what we are. Let me and the others go. Let this end. Please. Be the man I once loved one last time.”

The tears in Bartholomew’s eyes broke free, and with their exodus, so too faded Bartholomew’s snarl, his fangs, the red in his eyes, the batlike wings. He was Barry, pitiable and mourning.

He released Len and stood upright, the sounds of fighting fading, everyone standing still and vigilant, wondering if Bartholomew would kill them all in a blink, either with a spell or the speed with which he could tear into their necks.

Lewis lived, huddled against a wall near where John had dropped him. Nora lived too, as stunned as all the others when Bartholomew waved an arm to encompass the hall, and everyone who was a monster suddenly no longer looked monstrous.

He’d freed them.

“Go,” Bartholomew said, backing away to let Len up. “Take any others who wish to be free of this place. You are right. I have to end this.”

Len realized then that Bartholomew had taken the pouch. “Wait…”

“I will always love you, my Leonard,” Bartholomew said, and with a final look of longing, he opened the pouch and threw it into the air above him, creating ashen rain that fell upon his entire form.

He didn’t sizzle or howl, he simply grasped the gem around his neck, the soulstone that had been the center of this curse and all Bartholomew hoped to accomplish, and crushed it until it cracked.

Bartholomew cracked the same, with fissures like lightning etching throughout his body, until he shattered, like so much ruby crystal, falling as stardust and mixing with the dust from Leonard’s bones.

Dust together, in the end.

At first, Len was too stunned to believe it was real, but he didn’t get time to digest, for the view of the banquet hall seemed to suction in on itself like the center of a hurricane, distorted and spinning, making him fear the castle was about to implode, or that he had lost his mind with the loss of Bartholomew.

After a whoosh, rush of air, and moment of vertigo, everything returned to normal, but there was no more dust. There was no more banquet hall. They were no longer at the castle.

Len looked around, standing outdoors with everyone else, at the barrier gate. Everyone who had survived the fight was there. The sun was not yet up, but it was clearly beginning to cast its light upon the horizon.

The curse was lifted.

The bodies that had once littered the area were gone, as was the mist, leaving a clear expanse back to the village, where people were beginning to stir, noticing the crowd at the gate.

Len even saw John and Lyla’s twins, racing out of the protective circle when they saw their parents.

“You freed us.” Nora stared at her human hands.

“ _He_ did,” Len corrected.

“I hope that’s gratitude I hear,” Ray said to Nora, looking a far better sight as his half-elf self. “I am sorry to have killed your sisters, or that anyone had to die to bring this end.” He looked at Len, sympathy on his face that made it harder for Len to choke back the tears catching in his throat.

At least Nora looked cowed and not like she planned to fight.

Mick and Nate, back to their normal selves as well, shared a smile and clasp of each other’s forearms.

Then Mick said to Len, “Only you could kill _and_ save our quarry.”

Len laughed, helplessly but unable not to, still smiling as the tears fell. He wished things could have been different, but he couldn’t imagine another end being anywhere near this happy for others.

If not for him.

“All the generations that separate us, cousin, would be proud of what you accomplished here,” Zari said, winded from the fight but steadfast with those of her people who remained.

“And you,” Len said past a sniffle.

“Hear, hear!” Nate cheered, and an echoing cheer followed.

While Len doubted there was romance in store for Ray and Nora—though stranger things had happened—he had an inkling Nate and Zari were not yet done with each other.

The crowd from the village was close behind the racing twins, who embraced their parents gladly. There was bustle and quick accounts of what had transpired, but more so, Len watched the igniting hope as everyone realized that those who remained could live as themselves and do whatever they wished in this no longer cursed land.

It was theirs now.

“Nice look on you,” Nate said, approaching with Mick and Ray. “I even like the lily,” he finished, tapping Len’s doublet over his heart. 

Len hadn’t noticed a lily when he put the doublet on earlier, but as he looked now, there indeed was a flower—stitched with what looked like moon-touched embroidery.

Len’s eyes felt hot again, a few more tears streaking past his smile. He didn’t know how Bartholomew had managed it, but maybe in the same moment when he took the pouch of ash.

It was gone now, the pouch, though Len’s belt was back on his person with everything else, including his actual crossbow, instead of Nate’s conjuring, and even his amulet rested on its chain around his neck.

“You did well, brother,” Ray said, smiling kindly.

Mick nodded, adding an encouraging grunt.

He did do well, but he couldn’t have done any of it without them.

Without everyone.

“Hush!” John called over the ruckus beginning to rise.

Then Len heard why.

There was similar bustling and voices outside the gates.

Concerned, Len exchanged looks with his companions and they decided with nary a wood to investigate ahead of the townsfolk or freed denizens of Nightfall.

No.

 _Keystone_.

Though closed, the gate was part of a normal stone wall now. Len could feel the hesitation of the crowd behind him when he reached to open them, but it was time these lands were reunited with the outside world.

The moment the gates swung wide and they stepped beyond them, however, Len doubted his assumptions and almost worried he had made the wrong decision to end Bartholomew’s rule.

The King, the High Priest from the capitol, and an army of soldiers awaited them outside.

“Halt!” a soldier at the head of the army called. Most of them were on horseback, the King and High Priest included, making Len feel very small, even with his friends and an amount of people behind him who could be an army, but none of them should have to be part of a horde anymore.

“Calm yourself, General,” the King spoke.

He was middle-aged and tall of stature, with a full brunette beard and fine noble attire. Len had never seen the King before, but his voice seemed kind when he spoke. He didn’t even seem startled that a darkling led the people out of the gates.

The King rode his horse to the front of the line, followed by a distressed High Priest. “The attacks on Central City had become a concern reaching even to the capitol, though I was told by the High Priest that the Sun God temple here was handling it.

“Then, several days ago, all attacks stopped. When I arrived to investigate, the lord of Central and your own highest-ranking priest had gone missing. I trust someone can explain?”

Of course the attacks had stopped. What need did Bartholomew have of sending his horde once he had Len on a clear path toward him and Lewis and Darhk as prisoners?

Father Lewis! Len might have forgotten him, for he hadn’t noticed Lewis among the others returned to the gates. Perhaps that had been by design, with Lewis hunkering low to hide, but now he revealed himself, appearing through the crowd right past Len.

Surely, he would throw them to the wolves.

“My King.” Lewis bowed before the King’s horse, tattered but still in his priestly garb and clear in his station. “The monster slayed Lord Darhk, but I was spared.” He glanced briefly at Len, a slide of his eyes that Len wasn’t sure how to read. “I was spared because of the people behind me, but more so by my own acolyte, Len, who destroyed the vampire lord.”

Len wasn’t wearing his robes, but he had his amulet, and as stunned as he was, he stepped forward to announce himself. “My King.” He bowed, echoing Lewis, and passed the man who had scorned him so often as much of a smile of gratitude as he could manage.

There was muttering amongst the soldiers at a darkling being lauded, but also hushed whispers of ‘dark elves’ and ‘fiends’ as they spotted John and others like him amid the crowd.

“What of the Sun God’s wrath on such… creatures?” the High Priest sneered. 

Len could see that Lewis’s faith had been shaken. Maybe he too was no longer sure if the gods existed. If they did, Lewis clearly thought differently of them now, just as Len did.

“Whatever hand the Lord of Law had in this,” Lewis said, “the power that felled the true villain proves there is nothing evil in those who remain on those lands, least of all dark elves or darklings. They saved me, regardless of race or creed, and in turn, saved their home. And ours.”

“Surely—” the High Priest tried to argue, but the King raised a hand to silence him.

Len remembered the old king, the one from Leonard’s age. Leonard had never met him, but all word passed down from that monarch had been of hatred and ‘cleansing’.

This one seemed to have sense.

“Perhaps with an age-old curse broken, it is time to listen to new voices, especially with a vouch like that from one of our own Fathers. Well met, Brother Len.” The King bowed his head. “Is it you who wishes to be lord of these lands now?”

“What? No, I…” Trailing off in his floundering, Len looked beseechingly back at John and Zari, each of whom were leaders in their own rights. “I think either of you could handle that better. Or perhaps a council instead of a figurehead? Your majesty, I am merely a priest turned adventurer.” Len returned to the King with another bow. “I seek no title. But… would you allow the people of Keystone to keep their homes?”

The King gave a hearty guffaw. “I would rather avoid war with a people so recently cursed and capable of felling a vampire. You have representatives? Then we should speak.”

“You’ll start with us,” Zari said, stepping forward and gesturing for John to join her, “and we’ll let our people decide between lordship or council.”

“Your majesty, a village is just beyond the gates.” John gestures behind them. “If you will join us, I am afraid my brethren and I need to get out of the sun before it rises, but you are welcome if you have come to negotiate.”

There was further bustle and discussion, amounting in an eventual parade of the King and his men through the open gates, making the same trek that Len and the others once had, only this time with a more genuine welcome.

John and Zari led the throng into Keystone, with Lewis passing Len a heartfelt nod before joining them. Soon, mostly only Len and his friends were left.

“Do you not wish to stay?” Ray asked Len, as they stood, seemingly waiting on Len’s word.

Len hadn’t considered what came next. He hadn’t considered anything. Before today, he’d never had a true future.

“I think I am ready for a new adventure,” he said with a smile.

“With us, I hope?” Nate patted Len’s shoulder.

“You saved us _again_ ,” Mick added. “You better believe you’re stuck with us now.”

“I would like nothing more, though perhaps we could see how this new beginning turns out.” Len gestured after the few stragglers disappearing through the gates. “Say goodbye to our new friends. Restock supplies. _Sleep_.”

The others chuckled as if that sounded like paradise.

“Is that not part of the King’s entourage?” Ray asked once they finally turned toward Keystone. Everyone else had gone through now, but there was a cart half-hidden behind one of the gate doors. Len hadn’t noticed it when they exited.

“Is that… an arm?” Nate sputtered.

The thought that the previous carnage hadn’t entirely been cleared away churned Len’s stomach, but as he saw the arm dangling over the side of the cart, though unmoving, it didn’t look bloody or independent of a body.

“Maybe someone fell asleep,” Len said, and then hurried toward the cart faster as he thought, “or they’re hurt!”

He was soon running, with the others close behind. The cart was nothing distinct, a simple merchant’s cart, though there was nothing attached to it and nothing inside—other than the body.

Len jumped into the cart to gently lay the figure back, sprawling them out more comfortably and checking to see if they were breathing. The sight of the face that came into view made Len’s own breath catch.

“Barry…”

It was Barry— _Bartholomew_ but dressed as Barry, in deep brown slacks, leather boots and belt, and a burgundy shirt loosely tied together at the top with hide.

Len was terrified and hopeful all at once, but the fear subsided quickly, because the sun had just broken the horizon, and as Len looked upon the beautiful face of his love, it became bathed in light that didn’t burn him.

Bartholomew stirred, cringing at the sudden brightness and fluttering open hazel-green eyes. His dark hair, though neatly trimmed, was tousled in a way that let a stray lock fall into his eyes, and he smiled up at Len.

“What happened? Where am I? Did we get that drunk at the festival?”

“We… um…”

“Your boy?” Mick said. He and the others were peering into the cart, but none looked even mildly perturbed to see their enemy resurrected. They were smiling. “I wondered where he’d got off to.”

They didn’t recognize him—not as Bartholomew, only Barry.

“How’d you get out here?’ Ray asked, but Nate grasped his arm to pull him away.

“Maybe we better give them a moment to get reacquainted, hm?” Nate passed Len a wink, and Mick chuckled, as they dragged off a somewhat offended Ray to leave Len and Barry alone.

He _was_ Barry, sitting up in the cart, undaunted by sunlight. Even Len had to wince a little without a hood to guard him from the brightness, but Barry was human.

 _Human_.

“Len?” Barry asked, reaching to cup Len’s cheek so tenderly. “What’s wrong?”

The heat of tears filled Len’s eyes again as he leaned into that touch. Just as he had been gifted a new life, so too had Barry, molded into the man he sometimes pretended to be, who he was deep down.

Now he could be Barry for real.

“I have much to tell you, my love,” Len said, resting a hand over Barry’s.

“L-love?” Barry repeated with a blush.

“ _Much_ to tell you. If you’ll listen.”

Barry smiled, and when Len leaned forward to capture a chaste kiss, Barry returned the affection whole-heartedly.

It was impossible to stop smiling when Len finally guided Barry out of the cart. The temptation to keep the truth from Barry was strong, but Len didn’t want any lies between them, especially if they were being given a true second chance. He would explain, slowly, patiently, and hope that whether Barry ever remembered his time as Bartholomew or not, what they had ahead of them was their own story to tell.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know... I killed the brides! I toyed with having anyone killed come back, but that seemed too easy, and I would have loved to save them, but someone needed to die in the crazy end-fight! 
> 
> If you enjoyed this insane romp into Dracula inspired D&D, please let me know. 
> 
> And as always... see ya next ficcie!


End file.
